


Diaphanous Yesterday

by lordkrisdemort, twinflamedfest



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Heavy Angst, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, readers' patience and discretion heavily required, subtle and a couple of blatant mentions of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-08-24 12:10:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 45,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16639820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordkrisdemort/pseuds/lordkrisdemort, https://archiveofourown.org/users/twinflamedfest/pseuds/twinflamedfest
Summary: On a midnight train ride home, Sehun finds the solace he had thought he’d find in someone’s words in the silence that he’s sharing with Luhan.





	1. Thursday

**Author's Note:**

> • This story is heavy in emotional matters wise. If you’re looking for something light or blatantly happy or bubbly romantic, then this is not the one for you. Although I have to say that this story progresses to a better light, somehow.  
> • In this story, all EXO members that would be mentioned are on the same age.  
> • I’m not properly familiar with transportations and schools in Seoul. Every information I disclose in my story can not be held 100% accountable; they are solely for the purpose of giving the story a solid ground to grow on. It’s fictional, after all.  
> • Please do pay attention to the tenses because present events are described in present tense while past events are in past tense; unless there are some conditional statements where a present event uses past tense and a sentence in the a past event uses present tense. Italics are only used for very short flashbacks that aren’t a part of a past event disclosure. I avoided using italics to differentiate the past events from present events for a better reading experience. (I found it kind of bothersome to read a few of paragraphs back to back in italics.)  
> • This is for a HunHan fic fest, thus this is a HunHan story (although I shall admit this could almost pass as a Sehun-centric story). I just thought I needed to point this out, in case your imagination runs faster than the story plot ;-)  
> • If somehow this story ends up not making a sense to you, don’t be confused; I didn’t write this to make sense. It’s to feed your creativeness in imagining (and maybe to mess around but yeah –).  
> • I thank my two beta readers, my beloved Neha and Venus (whom I might have tricked into reading this) for, without them knowing, making me feel much better about this story.  
> • And I also apologize to fearfalle aka the prompter because this might go quite far from what she had in mind. Seriously. Forgive me.  
> • For whatever it might be, I’m sorry :)

 

It takes twenty minutes by train to travel between Yongsan and Seodaemun.

 

It takes a little bit more than twenty minutes from Yongsan to Seodaemun, and a little bit less from Seodaemun to Yongsan. There are taxis as the alternative way to travel between both districts, but trains are usually the cheapest option. For a frequent traveler, of course the train would be chosen.

 

Twenty minutes. That’s quite a lot. It’s enough to shower. Enough for an unhurried breakfast. Enough to proofread an essay. Enough to just sit on the edge of the bed and gather the pieces of consciousness that were scattered the night before.

 

But here Sehun is, on the train, head occasionally lolling back and forth due to the sleepiness. Doing nothing for twenty minutes, on a barely comfortable seat, surrounded by strangers, is always excruciating. He can’t even fall asleep; he wouldn’t want to miss his stop. He can’t sit carelessly because his uniform shirt would get wrinkled. He can’t even finish the homework he had forgotten to work on the night before because he gets motion sickness easily and reading will only make it worse. He can’t entertain himself with scrolling through his SNS page for the same reason. He can’t chew on anything since he didn’t bring any snack with him.

 

What a usual gloomy morning for his tired nineteen years old soul.

 

He can’t be tired yet, though. There’s still the painstaking process of graduating and college entrance test. This is nothing. He’s been through this for three years. It should be nothing.

 

He tries to ease his mind by looking at the greens of the trees outside the window across his seat. The motion is noticeably fast, and soon enough his eyes are becoming tired keeping up with it. His gaze shifts on another spot. A girl around his age, wearing a uniform from another school, is nodding her head to the music she’s listening to through the earphones attached in her ears. He feels like he had seen her somewhere back at his neighborhood. Is she the youngest daughter in that house right at the corner of the four-way narrow alleys he would pass by on his way to the train station? Or is she the girl who works at the mini mart near the playground a few blocks from his house instead? Or maybe the girl just has a quite common face; one he must’ve seen at least for once in his life.

 

The thing sleepiness does to your mind is it makes you notice random stuffs and start making imaginary facts to support your equally imaginary conclusion.

 

His ears then perk up at the sound of a snack package being torn apart.

 

His head follows the direction to the source of the noise. He finds a boy around his age, a few seats away on the row across his, in a uniform from another school – that Chinese school some neighborhood away from his own school. Dark brown fringes falling neatly above round, crystal-like eyes. The same eyes that are looking back at him. That’s when Sehun notices that the boy probably feels quite embarrassed, being caught in an act. As if opening a packet of Lays is a huge felony.

 

Holding in his laugh, Sehun turns his gaze away and opts for the ceiling of the train instead. He shifts around on his seat, trying to find a more comfortable position before his bottom starts to feel numb. He checks on his wrist watch; there are still ten minutes left before they’d get off. Somehow the sleepiness is now gone from his eyes. They only sting a little bit.

 

The man sitting next to him suddenly speaks, receiving a call on his phone. His voice makes Sehun’s mind focuses on his surroundings once more. His ears then pick up the muffled sound of chips being chewed. _Crunch, crunch_. It’s ridiculous; they’re at least three seats apart so how could the sound be so clear like this?

 

He can’t help but turn to look at the boy again. The boy with dark brown locks that are looking a little bit disheveled, now that he finally pays more attention to it. There’s a shiny red headphone hanging around the boy’s neck, its color looking so contrast with a small part of the milky white skin that is exposed. Sehun curses at himself for even noticing such random thing. He’s apparently at the highest level of boredom.

 

The boy looks back at him with the same unfazed look he had given him earlier.

 

Sehun’s left eyebrow lifts up without him even realizing it; it’s as if it has life on its own. It causes a domino effect on the boy, who’s now giving him a faint frown. They’re engaged in a gaze battle. The boy is still chewing on his chips, and Sehun is still trying not to glance at the chips.

 

_What am I even doing._

 

In the end, it’s the boy who breaks the tension between them. Round, petite face turns away, looking nonchalant yet also aware. Sehun exhales softly, releasing the breath he has been holding. He, too, looks away. The windows look much more interesting now. An unpleasant feeling arises in his chest, tickling his insides. He keeps a straight face nonetheless.

 

Now that he pays more attention to the view outside the window, he notices the skies are conspicuously bright today; the hues of blue and white are vivid across the endless canvas of horizon. It’s going to be warm today, he notes on his mind with a sigh. He’s not really that fond of Summer’s warm air.

 

Someone he knew very well was, though.

 

Sehun keeps a small, bittersweet smile to himself. _He would’ve loved it._

 

The train slowly comes to a halt. People around him start to gather their belongings. Some of them are already standing up, probably to save time, most likely in hurry. Sehun straightens up his back and puts his backpack on. The girl across him is also ready to stand up. Their gazes meet, and she gives him a shy, polite smile with a slight nod. He repays her the same favor, then they break the connection before it can get awkward. His gaze just happens to fall on the boy from earlier again, and he finds the boy already standing near the exit door. Feet tapping on the floor impatiently. Sehun scoffs. The smile that emerges after it betrays him.

 

The doors shift open noisily. The boy immediately walks down the stairs, his backpack swaying left and right behind him. He disappears in a matter of seconds. Sehun shakes his head in mild disbelief, standing up to walk to the same exit. Once he gets off the train, the boy is nowhere to be found.

 

 _Dramatic ass_.

 

He starts to walk towards the familiar direction to his school. The morning air is still chilly, much to his favor. But he can feel the warmth of the sunray on his face, feathering on his cheeks, easing the cold that has been trapped in his nose. It’s the kind of warmth he likes. It feels like the warmth that would radiate from two palms, pressing against the apple of his cheeks, squeezing them slightly.

 

It was, and is still, the kind of warmth that he likes dearly.

 

The last time he felt this kind of warmth was eons ago.

 

He picks up the speed, wanting to arrive at class as soon as possible. Sehun is only nineteen years old, yet with this tiredness inside him, he feels like he had lived twice that number.

 

=

 

“I can’t understand how you still managed to finish the homework when you arrived like five minutes before the class started.”

 

Not being bothered to look up and see the one who’s talking to him, Sehun just smirks. “What can I say? I’m a genius.”

 

“Without any actual help either.” He hears the screech of a chair being dragged against the floor next to him. “Why didn’t you finish it last night?”

 

“I was half way through it when I decided I was sleepy enough to go to bed.” Sehun says flawlessly, as if he had practiced it before.

 

“Lend me your brain, please.” Jongin lets out an exasperated sigh. “I haven’t been able to think.”

 

“Not my fault, not my job to help.”

 

He can vividly imagine Jongin narrowing his eyes at him. “You’re so heartless. I’m going to find a better friend.”

 

“I’m your only friend, Jongin.”

 

“Wrong. I’ve been hanging out with Kyungsoo. Joke’s on you.”

 

Sehun finally rips his gaze off the book he has been reading ever since the break time started and turns to Jongin. “Oh?” he raises an eyebrow. “So you’ve finally made your move, huh?”

 

The annoyance on Jongin’s face gets swept away in a matter of seconds, replaced with a sheepish expression. “He said he likes seeing people dance and I was like, ‘hey I’ve been in a contemporary dance team for years’ and he was like, ‘oh my God can you show me some of your routines?’ and yeah that was basically how I snatched him.”

 

Something grows inside Sehun’s chest. Something that is a mix of a few things. Of course he feels joyful for his friend; Jongin has been crushing on Kyungsoo for a year, and this is such a great progress. He feels giddy, too, from witnessing the start to something beautiful that Jongin and Kyungsoo would share. But he can’t deny the bitter feeling that accompanies them. What is this bitterness? It feels like he’s witnessing something that he could’ve had yet was snatched away from him cruelly without him even realizing it.

 

He can taste the bitterness on his tongue, and he hates it.

 

“That’s very good to hear, Jongin.” He says nonetheless. “I’m happy for you.”

 

Jongin leans backwards, blinking at him. “I… didn’t expect this reaction.”

 

“Huh? What did you expect?”

 

“I don’t know, maybe you, teasing me? I didn’t expect you to be this nice.”

 

“I’ve always been nice.”

 

“Yeah. Nice my ass.”

 

Sehun rolls his eyes, getting back on his book to pick up the reading. “I’ll ignore you for now.”

 

“Alright. Go on and hurt my feelings like you always do.”

 

Snorting, Sehun starts to focus on the words before his eyes. Break time would end soon and he wants to finish the chapter before it does. From his peripheral vision, he sees Jongin wandering his gaze towards the skies outside. “Do you think it will rain?” he hears Jongin’s tiny voice.

 

Sehun turns at him fully. “It’s sunny.” He deadpans.

 

Jongin shrugs, lips jutting out into a small pout by nature. “Sometimes rain follows after a very sunny day.”

 

Somehow, Sehun finds the statement empathize with him.

 

“It’ll suck.” Sehun follows the line of Jongin’s gaze, up to the skies, further, into the clouds, feeling a sense of longing and unfamiliar familiarity. It feels like he knows what’s behind those white puffs, and it feels like he wants to go there as well. “Such a shame if the rain decides to ruin this pretty view.”

 

He had a very sunny day for what felt like eternity, like his whole lifetime. He had loved those moments in that sunny day so much.

 

But rain poured down and washed all the joy away.

 

“There, there.” Jongin mumbles. “The melancholic face again.”

 

Sehun stares at Jongin for a moment before he gains his composure back. “What.”

 

“Why do you always look like that?”

 

“Like what?”

 

“Like you know you don’t belong here and you wish you’re somewhere else, but there’s nothing you can do but sit.”

 

Coughing out a small chuckle, Sehun closes the book with a loud ‘ _thump_ ’. “You’re just overanalyzing things again.”

 

“You know, you can let it out on me. I’m good at keeping secrets. Usually I’ll be out of the place before I could find someone close enough to share a gossip with. The perks of being a nomad.”

 

Sehun lets out a genuine laugh at that, making Jongin join him as well. They share a laughter for a moment, then Sehun lets it die down gradually as he shifts his gaze towards the skies outside the window once more. “Let’s just,” he says in a small voice, “enjoy this sunny day.”

 

Summer days are usually like this. Blazing, bright, almost blinding. Sehun has never been fond of it. But he had spent lots of days under the scorching summer sun, and it wasn’t by his own will. And those were the best days in his life.

 

In those days, he was with two people. Two bright smiles. Two big laughs. Two pair of mischievous eyes. Two hands that would claim each of his own and drag him around; the same hands that would occasionally end up against his cheeks, rubbing, pinching, at the most random time.

 

In those days, Sehun was with two people that loved Summer.

 

One of them is now somewhere far, far away, far from everyone’s reach. That person couldn’t bask in the warmth of the Summer sun anymore.

 

While the other one, well, that person is probably sitting in his class, red headphone secured on his head, blasting on some old Jay Chou songs.

 

It’s funny, how life works. Sometimes the outcome doesn’t reflect the process. It often comes with unexpected endings. And Sehun always felt he’s too young to learn about it already.

 

* * *

 

 

“I’m super hungry!”

 

“Me too. I didn’t eat anything during lunch time.”

 

“Yeah you loved soccer more than food. We all know.”

 

“It’s all Minseok’s fault.”

 

Sehun stared at two figures, walking ahead of him. Same height, similar frail bodies, twin black locks, twin backpacks adorned with twin keychains; ‘H’.

 

Same chirpy voice and melodious laughter.

 

He felt his lips blooming into a smile.

 

“Chanyeol said his Mom is okay with us doing the group study at their house.”

 

“Oh my, you’re liking the idea very much, huh?”

 

“Chanyeol offered it to us himself, you pervert.”

 

“I’m _not_ the one who’s very excited about it, though.”

 

He closed his eyes for a moment. Sehun’s eyes were always sensitive to the sunlight. It was Summer, and it was very sunny. He would’ve loved to walk home faster or even ask his sister to pick him up with her car but he’d rather get burnt under the sun than to leave the two figures in front of him.

 

He loved watching their backs more than sitting in a car with the air conditioner on full blast.

 

“Oh shit, where’s Hunnie?”

 

“Hun?”

 

The two figures turned back to find him. They stopped, and he mimicked.

 

“What?” Sehun said.

 

“Geez, why do you walk so slow?” one of them ran to him and immediately grabbed his hand, dragging him forward. “What if you get fever later for staying too long under the sun?”

 

Sehun rolled his eyes. “Dramatic ass.”

 

“True! I don’t want to be scolded by your Mom.” The other one grabbed his free hand. He was trapped between them. “Besides I’m super hungry. Does kimchi fried rice sound good?”

 

“We always eat that.”

 

“Let’s walk faster before I flood this street with my saliva.”

 

The three of them laughed wholeheartedly, boisterously. It wasn’t even that funny, but Sehun just loved sharing loud laughter with them.

 

The day was very sunny.

 

And they were happy.

 

Years later, Sehun would learn that sometimes, that’s all that matters.

 

* * *

 

 

Sehun stares at his own reflection inside the mirror right in front of him.

 

The mirror is a little bit tainted with dried remnants of water droplets. The result of it being cleaned with liquid chemicals and rubbed with different cloths for uncountable times. It’s a little bit chipped at the top right tip. If he shifts aside a little, he could see some faint scratches on the surface under the restroom light. It’s still usable, and people tend to ignore the inevitable flaws.

 

Inevitable flaws.

 

Flaws that are supposed to emerge, no matter how hard we try to prevent them from doing so, no matter how hard we try to erase them, no matter how hard we try to hide them.

 

Flaws that are forgiven, understood, overlooked for the sake of the greater good.

 

Sehun stares at his face in the mirror. Pale white skin, looking contrast with his short-trimmed black locks. A pair of thin eyebrows that frown naturally from time to time. There’s a faint scar at the side of the apple of his right cheek; he got it years ago after falling off his bicycle. His thin lips are quite pink, despite being exposed under the sun for many times. There’s also a little mole on his neck, under the right side of his jaw.

 

He looks alright, yet he’s not that merry about it.

 

Because he knows he has his own inevitable flaws. Unlike the mirror before him, his inevitable flaws are lying beneath his face. They’re invisible to naked eyes. They’re hidden pretty well. But one of these days, they’re going to show. He feels the moment nearing. And he both awaits and dreads it.

 

He looks alright, yet he feels wrong. There’s nothing wrong with him, technically. There really is nothing wrong with him.

 

It’s just that there is something wrong to him. Probably everything.

 

But he doesn’t speak of it, doesn’t point it out, for he fears the consequences that would follow if he does.

 

Something snaps inside his head. It’s the time to get back to the reality.

 

He shakes his head out of habit; as if it could shake off the heaviness from his mind. With a faint screech of the heels of his sneakers, he turns around and reaches for the handle of the door. It’s when he notices the fizzing sound behind him. He looks back and blinks; he hasn’t turned the faucet off. He immediately goes back and pushes down the stainless-steel handle, stopping the water from running. Even the stainless steel is stained with remnants of soap. Inevitable flaws.

 

He closes his eyes for a moment before opening them again. He finally leaves the restroom.

 

After exiting the short hall to the restroom, he sees Jongin and Kyungsoo around the table at the corner of the room. They’re in a diner, their usual place to hangout whenever the hunger after school isn’t bearable anymore. Until last week, it was just him and Jongin. Now Kyungsoo is in the picture, and somehow, he knows it’s him who’s going to be the extra cargo on the wagon instead. The thought makes him stifle a laugh.

 

“Have you guys ordered?” he asks once he arrives at the table, waiting until Jongin is done scooting to the inner corner of the seat. He then sits down once Jongin leans against the wall.

 

“Your beloved curry omu-rice.” Jongin states.

 

Sehun nods before turning at Kyungsoo who’s sitting across them. “What are you having?”

 

“Beef bibimbap.” Kyungsoo smiles politely at him.

 

Kyungsoo is calm. Collected. Pleasing to look at. He and Jongin would be a quite bizarre mix, and Sehun marvels at the image of it. They’d look pretty together.

 

“So, Kyungsoo,” Sehun rests his elbows on the table, clasping his hand before resting his jaw on them, “Jongin said you like to watch dance routines.”

 

From his side, Jongin sighs heavily. “I knew you’d do this.”

 

“Oh? Yes.” Kyungsoo’s eyes widen for a while, before they relax back and a smile bloom on Kyungsoo’s plump lips. He looks genuine. Another good trait. “I’m not a dancer myself but I love seeing people dance.”

 

“Really? What is it that you like about it?”

 

Kyungsoo tilts his head, probably formulating the words he’d use to explain his thoughts. “I love seeing the patterns in choreographies. How people move in sync, how they nail beat by beat. And sometimes they move in different pace but it still makes a pattern? Patterns. I love finding the patterns.”

 

Sehun nods slowly. “It’s a great way to describe it.” He acknowledges genuinely before glancing at Jongin. His friend looks like he’s in love.

 

“Do you dance too?” Kyungsoo asks.

 

He smiles slightly by default. “I used to. Before school stuffs started to stress me out. I guess I’m just not the type of person who can be good in two things at the same time.”

 

Kyungsoo stays silent for a while, seemingly understanding what he meant. He hopes it wasn’t that clear, how many times he had practiced those words inside his head. “It’s a wise decision that you took.” Kyungsoo speaks again. “Although I hope you’ll be able to dance again, if it’s what you love.”

 

Sehun shrugs. “Yeah.”

 

“Sehun here loves books more than dancing.” He feels Jongin’s hand patting his shoulder. “Even today, at break time, he chose a novel rather than a meal.”

 

“No. I chose the novel than talking to you.” Sehun counters flatly. Kyungsoo lets out a cheery giggle at it, clearly amused.

 

“There you go, hurting me again.”

 

Not that long after, Kyungsoo’s beef bibimbap comes first. The smell of gochujang sauce makes Jongin lean forward to appreciate how beautiful the cook had arranged the vegetables and beef on top of rice on the bowl. Soon Sehun’s curry omu-rice follows. Jongin once again looks at the food with sparkly eyes.

 

“I’m super hungry.” Jongin mouths.

 

“Please don’t mind his antics.” Sehun speaks at Kyungsoo instead. “He’s just… something else.”

 

Kyungsoo offers him a gentle, almost shy smile as he mixes everything inside his bowl with a spoon. “He’s a dork.”

 

Sehun smirks at the blushing Jongin.

 

Jongin urges him and Kyungsoo to eat first instead of wait for him. Kyungsoo hesitates about it, while Sehun immediately digs in. Jongin keeps belting out the lyrics to a sad song at him, giving Kyungsoo a good laugh. Soon enough his own food comes, and that’s when Jongin finally shuts up and immediately devours his meal.

 

“You two seem so close.” Kyungsoo comments, already scooping his first bite.

 

Jongin’s head perks up, nodding excitedly. “We’ve been friends since I moved in!” He exclaims, mouth full of food.

 

“He moved into the school six months after I did.” Sehun adds with a chuckle.

 

Kyungsoo smiles before taking a bite in.

 

Sehun turns at Jongin, raising an eyebrow. “Stop talking with your mouth full. If you choke later I won’t help you.” he chides. Jongin rolls his eyes as he chews, making him chuckle. Then his eyes fell on the dish Jongin is gobbling.

 

It’s fried rice. Orange-ish, almost reddish fried rice. With bits of beef and kimchi mixed in it.

 

Kimchi fried rice.

 

He hasn’t had it for quite long.

 

He had forgotten it exists.

 

Some moment later, he hears Kyungsoo asking something at Jongin. That’s when he snaps out of the trance. He quietly goes back to his own food, continuing to finish it. The curry tastes amazing. Splendid. The rice is soft and warm, quite savory, mixed with edamame beans. Just as how he likes it. The omelet that blankets the rice is fluffy and half runny, garnished with barbeque sauce. A marvelous dish. Rich of taste.

 

But the more bites he shoves into his mouth, the more the taste disappear.

 

What a shame. It’s such a great dish. His tongue isn’t appreciating it well enough.

 

He shoves and shoves.

 

His heart is pounding severely in his chest. He keeps shoving. He can actually hear it beating in an alarmed pace in his head. He keeps shoving nonetheless.

 

“ – hun!”

 

He stops abruptly. The fogs in his eyes clear away. He finds both Jongin and Kyungsoo looking at him, worry vivid in their face.

 

“Are you okay?” Kyungsoo asks with a small voice.

 

“Dude,” Jongin pushes the bottled water towards him, “if you choke, I wouldn’t know how to save you.”

 

Sehun gulps down. Finally he’s aware that he’s gulping. And suddenly his throat hurts. His jaw hurts. His chest hurts. He drops the spoon from his hand and grabs the bottled water, uncaps it and forces his throat to push down the food once more before he gulps down the liquid. It pushes the food further down. He finally breathes freely.

 

“Are you… okay?” Kyungsoo repeats.

 

“Wow.” He mumbles after making sure he won’t choke. “I must’ve been so hungry.”

 

Jongin snorts at him. “That’s what you get for choosing that confusing novel over lunch.”

 

Sehun nods, feeling like a broken puppet. “Yeah. My karma.”

 

They continue eating. Sehun finds himself a little bit hesitating now. But he picks the spoon back up and digs into his food again, being more careful this time. Kyungsoo asks something at him, and he eventually engages himself into the little talk he wasn’t aware of before. He laughs when they laugh. He smirks when Jongin gets a little bit awestruck at Kyungsoo. Their afternoon goes well, fairly.

 

This is what he’s good at. Picking himself back up and then pretending everything is and has always been alright.

 

It’s alright. He can’t be the only one who does this to survive. Everybody falls, and everybody gets up to walk again – whether they treat their scraped knees or not, whether they can afford to treat their scraped knees or are forced to let the wound dry by itself instead.

 

=

 

It doesn’t rain.

 

Sehun stares at the window of his bedroom through lidded eyes, bringing up the hem of his blanket closer to his face. The sun is starting to set down. It must be somewhere around six pm. He had taken approximately three hours of nap. He sighs; his body is going to ache.

 

He gets up to sit, still rubbing his face against the fabric of his blanket. Slightly disoriented, he tries to recall if he had dreamed of something throughout his nap. He finds nothing. Just black. A whole second that was actually three hours. One moment he fell into a deep slumber, and next he woke up with a dry throat. He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment before opening them again. Nothing comes in mind. He knows there was nothing, yet he still wishes there was something.

 

_Why won’t you come into my dreams?_

 

With a heavy feeling inside his chest, he yanks the blanket off, scoots towards the edge of the Queen-sized bed and puts his legs down.

 

_At least we can talk there._

_I have some things I’ve got to tell you._

 

He twists his shoulders in a circular motion to shake off the ache. Tilting his head left and right, he gets off his bed and walks towards the door to his bedroom. His hand hovers above the handle, and he stays in silence for a moment, a little stunned. Something swirls inside his head; a small dizziness, like a lonely fish swimming around its little tank after realizing that everything inside its little world is artificial. He squeezes his eyes shut for a few seconds before opening them again. Tiny stars scatter around his vision for a while before everything clears up. He grabs the handle and twists it, pulling the door open.

 

“Sehun?” a melodious voice calls for him the moment he appears out of his bedroom. “Oh my, look at you.”

 

Sehun finds his sister standing in the middle of the living room, not too far from where he is. She’s wearing a baby pink casual cotton dress, its loose hem falling gracefully around her body. Her long black locks are dancing along the movements of her head. Since when did his sister get this pretty? Or maybe she has always been like that. Always smiling, always cheerful, always gentle and patient.

 

He finds it weird, noticing these things out of the blue.

 

“Why are you home this early?” Sehun asks, his voice raspy due to the remnants of sleep.

 

Serin smirks. “My evening class got cancelled. The perks of college life.”

 

Nodding, Sehun lets out a big yawn, stretching his arms upwards out of habit. He doesn’t want to hear the word ‘college’ for the meantime.

 

“Wash up and come to the dining room, ‘kay?” Serin says as she closes her laptop on the coffee table, which Sehun finally pays attention to now. “Mom and Dad will be home soon.”

 

“Okay, noona.” Sehun starts walking towards the bathroom. “Where are they?”

 

He halts his steps when he notices his sister isn’t answering directly. He turns sideways to look at her. She stares back at him with an unreadable emotion on her face.

 

“At the Lu’s.” she finally answers.

 

Sehun holds his gaze on his sister for another moment.

 

“Hmm.” He hums. “Okay.” He yawns again before he spins on his heels and continues to walk towards the bathroom.

 

He closes the door and goes for the sink, turning on the faucet to let the water flow. He brings his hands together to cup the water and watches as the space between his palm gets filled. The water reaches the brim and eventually spills over his wrists. If he was wearing a long-sleeved tee, the hem of sleeves would’ve been soaked by now. It’s when he feels water running to the tips of his elbows that he snaps off his reverie. He ends up letting go of the amount of water in his hands and gather some again. He splashes them on his face and rubs his palms against it, wetting the tip of his short fringes during the process. He grabs a bottle of mouthwash and takes some into his mouth, rinsing thoroughly. Not being fond of the taste, he spits the liquid out and rinses his mouth with water this time. He never liked the taste of mouthwash.

 

After making sure that he doesn’t taste the liquid anymore, he turns the faucet off and pulls out some tissue from its box, dabbing them on his face and neck; he’s feeling lazy to grab a towel from the cabinet. He crumples the soaked tissue in his hand and throws them into the bin next to the sink. He fixes his pants and stays still for a moment before he turns around and walks out of the bathroom.

 

Never, even for once, did he take a glance at his own reflection in the mirror.

 

He was scared of what he would’ve found if he looked into his own eyes.

 

When he arrives at the dining room, he finds his sister already waiting for him, snorting at something on her phone. There’s a huge plate in the middle of the dining table, filled with cutlets of beef, probably marinated in sweet and savory sauce. Around the plate are smaller plates of side dishes. He cringes when he finds a stack of pickled red ginger in one of them. Serin is going to make him eat it.

 

There are only two bowls of rice, seemingly for each of them.

 

“Aren’t they coming home soon?” Sehun asks, already settling himself on the chair, sitting across his sister.

 

Serin shakes her head. “They said they’d go on a mini date once they’re done with the Lu’s. Ah, Mom said she’s going to get our strawberry cake on their way home later!”

 

Sehun chuckles when he sees Serin’s face lighting up just by talking about their favorite strawberry cake. It has long been a thing for them, sharing a medium sized strawberry cake together, immediately scooping from the whole cake instead of cutting them into slices. They both have sweet tooth; thus, they share a big amount of love for cakes and chocolate products.

 

“Should we start eating now?” he asks.

 

Putting her phone down, Serin clasps her hands together and intertwines her fingers. “Pray first.”

 

Sehun mimics his sister’s move, locking his fingers together and casts his gaze down over the bowl of hot rice in front of him. It’s a navy blue rice bowl, the pair to Serin’s red cup, which she had won from that famous amusement park last year. The cups have prints of Mickey and Minnie Mouse on them, scattered around the edge. Sehun recalls telling Serin to give the blue bowl to her boyfriend instead, but she just raised an eyebrow at him. ‘ _And you expect me to ask for the bowl back if we ever break up, hm?_ ’

 

“Done!” he looks up the moment Serin announces it. He grabs the chopsticks at the side of his bowl and picks up a piece of meat from the plate, dipping in into a cup of sauce. He takes a mouthful of it and chews, already appreciating how tender the meat is.

 

“Is it good?” Serin asks with bright eyes.

 

Sehun nods genuinely. “How could you be so good at cooking?” he asks rhetorically.

 

Smiling sheepishly, Serin nudges her jaw towards the red ginger. “Would you eat it tonight?”

 

“No.”

 

“Then have some of the bok choy, will you?”

 

“Were they stir fried with garlic? No.”

 

He looks up to Serin’s unamused face.

 

“I mean, no doubt I’ll eat them.” Sehun mumbles as he immediately reaches for the vegetable, picking some of the cooked leaves and drops it on the top of his rice. He then gets another slice of meat and puts it on the bok choy leaf and lifts them together.

 

“Good boy.” Serin smirks when he takes them in and starts to chew.

 

Sehun smiles anxiously. Only Serin can make him eat vegetables without that much of a fuss. “But really, though, this meat is so savory. How did you make it?”

 

“By mixing up this and that.” Serin shrugs, picking up a slice for herself. “That’s the point of cooking after all.”

 

Almost choking on the food in his mouth, Sehun stifles a laugh. “Mom will cry if she hears that.”

 

“They’re missing out a big time. How dare they choose to eat out?” Serin lets out an exasperated sigh, faking the disappointment on her face.

 

“I know, right.” Sehun nods. “Why did they have to go there anyway?”

 

It’s seconds later when Sehun finally realizes what he had asked.

 

“Oh, well,” Serin immediately counters. It’s obvious that she’s taken aback yet doesn’t want to let the atmosphere fall down. “To discuss things about the… you know, the memorial.”

 

Sehun replies with nodding. He feels like a fool. _I don’t care._ “Yeah. I kind of… forgot.” _I don’t care._

 

Serin smiles at him. He doesn’t have the heart to point out how forced it looks. He watches as his sister picks another slice of meat and places it on his bowl. “They want to help with the preparation, like last year.”

 

Nodding again, Sehun stares at the amount of rice that’s left in his bowl. A piece of meat lies lonely next to it. “Hmm.” He hums. _I don’t want to care._

 

“It’s already been two years. Time flies quickly,” Serin adds softly, “doesn’t it, Hun-ah?”

 

Sehun knows his sister is looking at him, trying to meet his gaze, but he opts to stare at the plates in front of him instead. The red ginger suddenly looks tempting. He picks a little amount of it up carefully. He can already sniff it.

 

“Even if it feels like time has stopped, like we won’t be going anywhere further, like there is nothing more that will come to us, time still runs, flies. Without us even realizing it, it’s been two years.” Serin continues.

 

He adds the red ginger on top of the piece of meat in his bowl then picks them up together, putting them into his mouth. He starts to chew. The taste is, unexpectedly to him, marvelous. He likes it. He likes how strong and distinctive it tastes.

 

“Even if we get through it with tears instead of laughter, even if we feel like every day is longer than a century,” her voice gets smaller, “we still get through it in the end.”

 

He gulps down. It was good. He should try more. He lifts up his chopsticks and searches for the plate, when finally, his gaze meets Serin’s gentle, warm one.

 

“Please get to the point.” He finally croaks out.

 

Serin just keeps her gaze on him for a moment. Then she shakes her head a little. “There is no point.” She smiles. “I’m just being poetic.”

 

“You have something to tell me.” Sehun points out. “You always do.”

 

“And I’m always good at keeping it in, especially when I know you don’t need to hear them.” She says, delicate yet firm. “No worries, Hun-ah.”

 

Sehun knows his sister means what she said. She’s a trustworthy person. But what does he know? What could he be sure of? After learning that everything can tumble down in a matter of second when he thought it’s doing fine, what else could he be sure of? “You mean it?”

 

Serin nods. “I mean it.” She says, still with gentle voice, yet firm and loud enough to reach his clouded mind and shaken judgment.

 

After he gets those words, he finally realizes the breath he has been holding on. The air barges into his system, filling his lungs with a hit, making his chest hurts out of sudden. He tries not to let the chaos inside him shows. He has no energy to deal with Serin’s worry. It’s not like she’s oblivious about it; after all, she knows him the most.

 

Aside of _them two_.

 

“Do you want me to stay with you while you work on your assignment?” Serin says, already finishing her bowl. “Maybe I can help with typing.”

 

Sehun wanders his gaze over his bowl once more. He thinks for a moment. He’s not really seeking for a company, but he figures out that he also doesn’t want to be alone tonight. Who knows what his mind might do to him once the silence gets too much. “It’s a writing task, though.” He mumbles. “But I’ll be working in front of the TV. You’re going to be watching that new drama, right?”

 

Serin nods with a smile; it looks brighter this time. “I’ll take care of the snacks.”

 

They spend the night in front of the TV at the living room; Sehun sitting on the carpet, working on his homework slowly, and Serin surfing through the channels with a bowl of nachos on her laps. Sehun constantly asks his sister’s opinion about the answers he’s going to put on his book. Serin has always been helpful when it comes to studying; she’s always been smarter than her friends and classmates in general, which was why she easily skipped a year in middle school and another year in high school. She’s only a year older than him, yet she’s already on her third year in college. And somehow always being a step ahead of everybody else adds to the level of wisdom she possesses.

 

Sehun remembers wanting to be like Serin. Always ahead of everybody else. Looking cool and casual while doing it.

 

It was years ago, before he found that he had all the reasons to stay on the normal track.

 

Now that the reason has long gone, it’s already too late for him to speed up. He can’t speed up when it’s already a challenge for him to walk without tumbling down.

 

He finishes writing down the answer to the last question of his homework. There are small spots of ink on his middle finger, near the nail. He frowns at them, but then lets the annoyance go as he leans back and take one last look over his homework. His frown only gets deeper. “Noona,” he calls, “doesn’t it look tilted to you?”

 

Serin hovers above his shoulder. “What?”

 

“My writing.” He says. “The starting spot. It goes inward more and more every row.”

 

“It looks fine to me…?” his sister says.

 

Sehun looks back at him. “You’re not even sure.”

 

“I am!” Serin points at the page. “Your writing is neat, really.”

 

He turns back at his book. “Why does it look tilted to me?”

 

He then hears Serin chuckle. “Even if it’s not straight, you can’t do anything about it. It’s written with pen after all. You’re not thinking of rewriting everything, right?”

 

Sehun still stares at his writing. What a mess. He should’ve written more slowly. Should’ve paid attention to it. “I can cover them with correction tape.”

 

“And make it look worse?” Serin laughs. “Just leave it be, Hun-ah.”

 

As what his sister tells him, he leaves it be. He closes his notebook and leans back against the edge of the couch. He feels a hand ruffling his hair.

 

He doesn’t get it, how the world works. Maybe he does, but he’s not satisfied with what he found. Why does everything happen out of everyone’s control? Even when they felt like they knew what they were doing, in the end they get the result they didn’t expect, and even if they know how to fix it, they can’t just go and do it because some things are meant to be left wrong in order to save the last amount of right that’s left. He hates that aspect of life. He feels like he’s prone to betrayal. Like in all of those years he was lulled, blinded by a mirage, and by the time he woke up, everything was a mess.

 

Nowadays he’s scared to be happy, because it’s like whenever he’s happy, something would go wrong as the price.

 

Life is such a betrayer.

 

He brings all of these thoughts into his bedroom, sending them to dream land. It’s in pitch black, anyway. He can throw them into it and pretend they don’t exist as long as he can.

 

* * *

 

 

“What do you guys want to be in ten years?”

 

Not even a second after, Sehun found himself letting out an annoyed groan, along with the boy who was sprawled on the carpet next to him. He found an eraser near his arm, grabbed it and immediately threw it on another boy who had spoken a moment ago, sitting with knees up on the chair before the desk.

 

“For God’s sake, _corgi butt_ , it’s only the second month of our first year of high school!” the boy next to him whined.

 

Sehun shook his head lazily. “Disappointing.”

 

“I was just _asking_.” The boy on the chair pouted, massaging the spot where Sehun’s eraser had hit. “Seriously, you can tell me you’re going to be in Avengers and I’d still hype you up!”

 

“Ow, I’d like to be Spiderman.” Sehun mumbled.

 

“Spiderman isn’t even in Avengers.” The boy next to him snorted.

 

“Excuse me, have you actually _seen_ the trailer?”

 

“It’s all a hoax.”

 

“You can actually _Google_ the cast –“

 

“Hey, twins,” Sehun and the boy next to him immediately turned at their friend again, “you guys haven’t answered.”

 

The boy next to him let out a heavy sigh. “Well,” he paused for a moment, “in ten years… I want to be… hmm, let’s see… the creator of a very famous app, maybe?”

 

“Oh, like Snapchat.”

 

“Or Vine.”

 

“That’s so…” the boy on the chair mumbled, “lame.”

 

“You said you’re going to hype us up!”

 

“What about you, Hun-ah?” the boy asked instead.

 

Sehun didn’t answer right away. He didn’t know what to. Instead of thinking about what to tell his friend, he decided to just bask in the moment, the presence of his best people around him, the moonlight that shone through the window of the bedroom, and the coziness and warmth that was lingering in the air. It has been their habit every weekend to have a sleepover at one of their houses. And whenever it was a sleepover, they’d stay up late until two or three in the morning, just talking about random things.

 

His gaze focused on his friend on the chair. He was still waiting for Sehun’s answer, but there was no rush and serious curiosity on his face. He was resting his chin on his knees. Sehun then glanced at his other friend next to him, and found that the said friend was also looking back at him, calm yet expecting. Something in his chest throbbed. For a moment, he was trapped inside the depth of round eyes, full of warmth and familiarity. The owner of the eyes smiled at him softly. It only made his heart hammer faster inside his ribcage.

 

 _Pretty._ Sehun wanted to say, to the boy who was still staring back at him. _Your eyes are so pretty_.

 

He wasn’t sure of what he wanted to be in ten years, but in that moment, he just wished that in ten years, they’d still have this kind of bonding time. No matter what path they’d take, no matter how busy they might be.

 

He opted to turn at the boy on the chair again. “What about you?” he asked back instead.

 

The boy giggled. “As expected from our Sehunnie, mysterious as ever.” He grinned before he leaned back against the chair. “Well, I think I made it clear for you guys. I want to be a singer. Nation’s top singer.”

 

“Oh, you want to be in a boy group.” The boy next to him chuckled.

 

“What? No! I want to be a singer! Like Rain, or K.Will. Or Sung Shikyung. Roy Kim. I want to be a singer!”

 

“You’ll get very famous if you’re in a boy group, though.” Sehun nodded in agreement with his friend. “Like Lee Taemin.”

 

“What the fuck, guys.”

 

“But I feel like you can make it.” The boy on the carpet next to him said, genuineness filling his voice. “No, you _will_ make it, if you start.”

 

His friend on the chair blinked at them, hiding his lips behind his folded arms that were resting on his knees. “You do?”

 

The boy next to him nodded. Sehun found himself smiling as well.

 

“And when you’re famous, you can date Chanyeol and make a very huge scandal.”

 

“What on the actual fuck, _Bambi_?!”

 

Sehun snorted so hard.

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Friday (Part One)

 

It rains in the morning.

 

Sehun curses at himself as he walks carefully, his right hand gripping an umbrella. He stares down over his shoes; white Converse with equally white lace. Serin had told him it would rain and that he should probably wear his other sneakers that are easy to clean in case mud gets on it. He just took the umbrella she had insisted him to bring without changing his shoes. Now he regrets it with his whole being.

 

 _Jongin_ , he grumbles inaudibly. _It’s all because of your damned mouth._

 

He waits patiently for everyone else to climb up onto the train before him. He can’t afford letting any water drop splash on his pants. Stains irk him. They’re a fault. They get on places they aren’t supposed to be on. They reduce aesthetical point. They often leave traces, ones that are hard to get rid of.

 

Everyone is up. He immediately follows.

 

Once he’s seated, keeping his umbrella in a distance, he finally notices the humid air around him, the scent of wet soil that had wafted into the space and got trapped inside once the doors closed. He stays silent, leaning back, pressing his backpack against the chair. Somehow the scent calms him down. He’s liking it, sort of. It’s a scent that doesn’t rush your senses. A delicate scent. One that traps you slowly instead of bursting out of sudden.

 

He likes slowness. For the past two years, everything has been going on so fast; he’s tired of keeping up. He’s tired of keeping up, yet he doesn’t have the courage to stop and get left behind. So, for once, he likes it when everything is slow. It gives him some time to succumb into the dark gray side of his mind.

 

Eventually, his senses tingle. He feels quite alarmed. Someone must be staring at him.

 

Sehun lifts up his head, finding various kinds of people on the seat across him. There’s the familiar girl again, wearing a light gray jacket. Next to her are two adults, conversing animatedly. They’re all in their own little, safe, personal worlds. He looks away, feeling like he’s been trespassing their borderlines.

 

When he turns to the left side of his sight, he finally finds the pair of eyes that have been staring at him.

It’s the red headphone guy again. However, unlike the other days before, the guy’s sitting next to him instead of right next to the exit door. They’re approximately a meter away from each other; he didn’t even realize he had settled down next to the guy. He’s also not wearing his headphone. He must’ve kept it inside his bag, probably fearing it would get wet. The said guy looks cozy in his red hoodie. He doesn’t seem to realize that Sehun has caught him staring. The guy isn’t looking at Sehun’s face. He’s looking at everything on him except of his face. Like he was reminiscing. Like Sehun is some kind of a painting the guy hadn’t seen for quite long. Like the guy was… worried of him.

 

Sehun feels patient today, so he just lets the guy observe him. He doesn’t know how to wake the guy up from his reverie anyway. Eventually, he also takes the opportunity to take a good look at the guy. It’s not that he doesn’t acknowledge the guy completely. It’s safe to say that he’s familiar with him. Maybe too familiar. And because the guy is too familiar, he now notices some things he didn’t actually notice in the days their gazes seldomly met before this. The guy’s hair isn’t actually dark black like before; it’s got this hue of dark brown, almost bronze, that appears and disappears along the movement of his head – have they been dark brown for long? In his memories, they’re black. If his eyes are correct, there are a few of scratches on the right side of his jaw, probably from his soccer routine. His gaze then trails down at the guy’s fingers that are resting on the laps, noticing that some of them are wrapped in band-aids.

 

He looks up once more, and finds that the guy is now staring back into his eyes. He’s aware now. Somehow, now that they’re locking gazes, Sehun finally recognizes the tiredness and heaviness on the guy’s face. They weren’t there before, when all they did was stealing glances. But now they’re there, bare for him to see.

 

Doe eyes blink back at him, twice, thrice, before they tear away from him. The guy puts his backpack on his laps and unzips it, then starts rummaging through the contents inside. A moment later his hand pulls out a handkerchief. A soft looking baby blue cloth. The guy stares at it for a while, before handing it to Sehun.

 

Sehun doesn’t take it right away. He’s still staring at the guy.

 

“You look like you might need it.” The guy says. Velvety voice echoes through his eardrums. Right into his head. Straight into his chest.

 

“Sorry?” Sehun says out of the sudden nervousness inside him.

 

The guy just shrugs. “You look uncomfortable. Thought it’s because of that.”

 

Sehun glances at the direction the guy nudges his chin to. His wet umbrella rests against the seat next to him. Some of the water droplets from the fabric keep getting on his pants. He looks back at the guy again, who is still holding up the handkerchief. He finally takes it. “Thanks.” He murmurs.

 

“You’re welcome.” The guy answers. “You go to that international high school, huh?”

 

Patting the lower area of his pants where the water droplets are still removable, he nods out of habit. “And you go to that Chinese high school some blocks from us.”

 

There’s a short pause, before the guy speaks again, and Sehun notices the hint of amusement in his voice. “Oh, you’ve been… observing, hm?”

 

That steals his attention right away. He immediately looks up at the guy, who is staring back at him calmly. “Like you haven’t yourself.”

 

“Didn’t say I haven’t.” the guy answers, still with the calmness.

 

Sehun finally realizes how silly the conversation is. He laughs, and it infects the guy. They both share a light laughter. “Sorry that I stared at you that long. There was nothing interesting to look at here, and I’ve a little bit tired of my phone lately.” The guy says.

 

“I can’t even look at my phone for too long. I get motion sickness too easily.” Sehun lets out a chuckle, which then gets mimicked by the guy afterwards. He hands the handkerchief back to the guy. “Thanks again.”

 

“Oh, you can keep it.” The guy smiles, hands waving awkwardly. “I don’t use it that often anyway.”

 

Frowning slightly, he glances at the cloth then at the guy again. “Really?”

 

“Really. I have another one too inside here.” The guy pats his backpack. “Who knows you might need that again.”

 

He nods slowly. His thumb circles on the fabric, trying to feel the softness more. It’s nostalgic. Almost too nostalgic. Like an overwhelmingly familiar feeling. “Thank you.” he mumbles, then he folds the cloth into two, folding it once more, then shoves it gently into the breast pocket of his uniform shirt. When he looks up again, the guy shares a polite smile with him.

 

_Has your smile always been that pretty?_

 

They both lean back against their seats again, settling down into their own little worlds once more. They’re still aware of each other, like days before, but this time it’s comfortable for the both of them.

 

“I’m Luhan.” The guy says out of the blue.

 

His heart thumps a little bit too harshly. It makes his breath hitch. But he gathers himself back in a split of second.

 

“Sehun.” He says.

 

He then feels eyes glancing at him. This time, they don’t feel prickling. “Nice to meet you, Sehun.”

 

Sehun nods out of habit. “We met since long ago.” He says, not even realizing the words he had let out immediately. He looks at the guy – Luhan, who looks perplexed. “You’ve been riding this train for long, right? Always saw you every morning.”

 

Luhan looks a little bit lost, before he nods with a smile. “Yeah. We’ve been riding the same train for long. It’s about time that we finally introduce ourselves, huh?”

 

“… yeah.”

 

After another polite smile, Luhan settles back against the seat again, facing forward. Sehun does the same, and he finally realizes how irregular his breathing has been. He takes a deep breath, inhaling as much air as he can take, then releases it slowly, steadily. His eyes then linger around the view in front of him; there are quite a lot of people around him. But the loneliness still lingers. No matter how many people there is around him, no matter how familiar they might be, no matter how any conversations he goes through with them, he still feels alone.

 

Loneliness is his only friend, but of course it’s not the kind of friend that gives him company and consolation.

 

He’s lonely and tired of everything.

 

But what’s new, anyway.

 

They stay like that, seemingly being a couple of strangers once more, for the rest of the ride.

But at some point, he glances at the guy again. Luhan. There’s this melancholic aura that surrounds his face. _Have you been feeling lonely, too?_

_I hope not._

 

The rain has stopped when they reach their destination. Unlike days before, where Luhan used to immediately fly off his seat the moment the doors open, this time Luhan moves slowly, as if he’s waiting for him to get off the train with him. And he does. He starts to walk when Luhan does. They get off the train together.

 

They stop not too far from the train. Luhan stands there, amidst people passing him by. Sehun finally notices things he failed to see earlier. The soles of his white sneakers are slightly tainted by the mud beneath his feet; they might have splashed against the rubber when he walked too fast. There are faint dots along his khaki pants, probably remnants of the water droplets – _did he run through the rain?_

 

“See you later, Sehun.” Luhan says, making him look up at his face.

 

Sehun is stunned for a moment, before he nods. “See you later, Luhan.”

 

Luhan shares the last smile for the morning before turning around on his heels. He starts to walk away, picking up his pace. Sehun can’t take his eyes off Luhan’s back. It’s like he’s watching an angel walking with tattered wings dragged against the ground behind. His own shoulder slouches; the gravity wants to swallow him again.

_Why do I keep watching someone walk away from me?_

 

He feels something on the tip of his nose, like drops of water. He looks up at the skies and feels the sensation all over his face. It’s drizzling. Soon it’s going to rain again. He looks down again at his hands in bewilderment.

 

He had left his umbrella on the train.

 

=

 

“Are you going to skip break time again?”

 

Sehun barely looks up from his desk. On the wooden surface, his notebook lays side to side with a thick textbook. His pencil case is nestled neatly at the corner of the table, almost reaching the edge. His pencil is firm in his hand, scribbling, slightly digging into the paper, almost scratching it.

 

“What are you doing?” he hears Jongin’s curious voice again.

 

“Homework.”

 

There’s a silence for a moment, and Sehun inwardly thanks the Heavens for it. He’d like to _not_ engage in a talk for the meantime. But then Jongin’s voice cuts his peace again. “The one that was given a few minutes ago?” the voice asks, probes; it almost sounds accusing, judging, and it makes the hairs on Sehun’s arms tingle up in mild fear and annoyance. “The one we were asked to hand in _next week_?”

 

Sehun just hums as a reply. It comes out more like a grunt.

 

“Dude, you’re really working on it, like, _right now?_ ”

 

He gives up. He puts his pencil down and looks up at Jongin, who’s casting this perplexed look on his face, bottom lip involuntarily jutting out. “What’s wrong?” Sehun asks, trying to appear as calm as possible.

 

“You’re skipping brunch for a homework that is due in a week. It should be me who ask you, _what is wrong_?” Jongin sits on the chair right in front of Sehun’s desk, facing him. “Why are you doing this?”

 

Sehun shrugs. “I’m not in the mood for food.”

 

“But why?”

 

 _It isn’t enough to distract me._ “I’m saving my stomach for later.”

 

Jongin still stares at him, frown getting deeper, nose scrunching up in curiosity. They stay like that for a moment before the frown disappears, and Jongin looks like he had found the answer. “Are you intentionally giving me some space for Kyungsoo?”

 

For a split of second, Sehun’s mind goes void. Who? Oh, yes, Kyungsoo. He almost forgot about Kyungsoo.

 

“I…” Sehun ponders about what to answer. “Well, it’s actually not like that, but now that you’ve mentioned it, I guess it’s because of that too.”

 

He expects to see mirth in Jongin’s eyes. Jongin is so easy to please like that. He gets excited and touched over the simplest things. But instead of mirth, he sees worry swirling back into the almond orbs. “Hey,” Jongin calls for him softly, and Sehun is taken aback by it; the gentleness and cautiousness the voice bears, “are you alright?”

 

Sehun would’ve said he is. If only Jongin had asked it in a more nonchalant or casual way, if only his friend hadn’t shown such an amount of sincere worry on his face, he would’ve said he is. But Jongin asked like he already knows the answer. Like he knows what’s going on inside Sehun’s head, although not in details. And it shuts him down. It silences him. Because he doesn’t have any excuse to come up with anymore. So he just stays still, mum, like a child being caught red-handed by its parents, already scared even though the parents aren’t even angry.

 

_I’m not._

 

“You never told me anything.” Jongin coaxes. “You know you can, right?”

 

 _I know._ Sehun nods.

 

“I’m not the best person who can give you advice or wise words. I suck at them. But my ears are big enough to listen to you, and my head is not that bad, it can keep your words safe inside. We can play pretend that you never even said them afterwards if you want. Just… please tell me anything.” Jongin grabs the edge of the desk, not really putting pressure on it. “If you feel like it, please tell me. Anything.”

 

He wants to. He really wants to spill everything out. He wants to let those words out of his respiratory system, to leave himself bare, to throw all of them at someone, and maybe get a help in understanding why has everything been looking so wrong to him. But then what? What would happen after he does all of that? What are the consequences he’d have to bear? What would all of them change?

 

If letting everything out could make him get out of this world and go back to two years ago, or go to the life he could’ve had if only that night never happened, then he would. He’d gladly do so. He’ll spill, he’ll puke them out like rejecting poisonous liquid from his body.

 

But nothing. Nothing could ever change anything.

 

So he just nods. An empty promise to the friend who cares so much about him. It’ll satisfy Jongin for now.

 

“I’ll go to the cafeteria for now. Won’t be long!” Jongin says with this cheerful voice. Sehun feels guilty at how forced it had sounded. “I’ll get you some juice. Is that okay?”

 

Sehun looks up at his friend. Jongin is so kind. So warmhearted. Maybe he was the compensation the Heavens gave him after letting him go through it all. “Orange and carrot mix, please.”

 

Jongin holds up a thumb. “Be right back.”

 

He watches in silence as his friend walks out of the classroom. Not wanting to dwell on it any longer, he gets back to his notebook, picking up the pencil in the process. He then notices the graphite scratch on the center of the page. Frowning, he puts the pencil down again and reaches for his pencil case to take out the eraser. He fumbles with the zip, fingers feeling numb out of sudden, and when he finally unzips the pencil case, his hand puts too much force on it, making it fly off his desk. It falls on the floor, its contents spilling around. There it is, the eraser.

 

See? Now everything is a mess.

 

If he lets all the words and emotions inside him out, they’d only make a mess.

 

Slowly, he picks up the contents and puts them back into the pencil case.

 

Unlike the lucky pencil case, there’d be no one that would be able to pick his pieces up for him. Even if they’d want to, they wouldn’t know how to.

 

Taciturnly, as if nothing happened, he picks up the pencil and continues to work on his homework.

 

He only has himself.

 

=

 

On his way home from the train station, he meets a couple of familiar faces.

 

And the faces, who were quite surprised before, are now lighting up at him.

 

“Sehun!” one of them says. “Oh Sehun!”

 

“You punk,” the other immediately goes towards him, catching him in a hug, “gosh, it’s been such a long time!”

 

He notices them wearing casual clothes. Casual, but still appropriate for attending classes. College. He forgot that they’re in college now.

 

Sehun wants to run. He wants to melt onto the asphalt. Disappear. Stop existing. He wants to let go of the friendly arms that are engulfing him in a tight hug, scream, and scramble away. But he can’t. Not when he’s petrified like this. Not when a bitter, melancholic feeling has taken over his whole chest.

 

“Jongdae.” Sehun calls softly.

 

“How about me?” the other guy whines.

 

Sehun chuckles. It sounded more like he was half choking. “Minseok.”

 

He recognizes the bitter feeling. Longing. He never really realized that he misses those familiar faces.

 

Because he had set himself not to miss everything.

 

“Is it just me or have you really grown taller?” Jongdae muses as he _finally_ releases Sehun from his arms. “What do you think, Seok?”

 

Minseok exhales heavily. “Even if he hasn’t, he’d still be taller than I am.”

 

That elicits a genuine laugh from Sehun. It’s a genuine kind of mirth, but his eyes are starting to feel like they’re burning.

 

Jongdae just snorts at his buddy before he puts a hand on each of Sehun’s shoulder. “Look at you. Look at you!” he sighs dreamily. “Looking so cool. As expected from an international high school kid.”

 

“Shut it.” Sehun brushes off Jongdae’s hands with a shy smile. “Did you guys have afternoon class or something? It’s already four pm.”

 

“We didn’t. I was just waiting until this one was done playing soccer with our classmates.” Jongdae points at Minseok, who grins sheepishly.

 

Sehun can’t find anything to say to that. He’s stunned. _Soccer_. He watches as Minseok’s grin fades into an awkward smile. _Soccer_.

 

 _Of course_. “Of course.” He finally says. Minseok and Jongdae accept it with warm smiles.

 

“Hey, what about you? Why are you on your way home this late?” Jongdae asks, curiosity and worry dripping from his voice. “Is it true that the classes extend until 3 pm there?”

 

“What? No.” Sehun snorts. “I stayed back to work on a group assignment.”

 

It’s not a lie. He stayed back to work on a group assignment that is due next week. By himself.

 

Minseok nods, looking proud. “I’ve raised you right.”

 

“ _We_ have raised him right.”

 

Sehun can’t hold his laughter back. “Yes, thank you, _dads_.”

 

“Or not! He was our son until _the duo_ stole him from us –“

 

He watches as the excitement on Jongdae’s face seeps away into the drain, like he was losing blood and the color along. Then his gaze shift on Minseok, who is also looking alert now, glancing at Jongdae in panic.

 

Strangely, nothing inside him reacts to the name. It’s like he has turned numb. He had expected a swirl of suffocation to grow inside his chest. But there’s nothing. He feels nothing. He wishes he was like this before. He wishes he has always been like this.

 

“I mean,” Jongdae speaks again, voice smaller than before, “I…”

 

Somehow, he musters up a smile. He even lifts up a hand and pats Jongdae’s shoulder, purposely ignoring the paleness on Jongdae’s face. “It’s all cool.” He says, voice surprisingly unwavering. “Hey, I should be going now.”

 

“Alright.” Minseok gives him an assuring nod. “Be safe.”

 

“You guys too.” Sehun steps away. He notices that Jongdae and Minseok are still looking at him, probably confused about what to do or say to him. The atmosphere is worse than awkward now.

 

“Sehun,” Jongdae calls for him, “please, be alright.”

 

He then feels it. The soft _thud_. A faint _pang_. Echoing inside his chest. The swirl of suffocation, it has started to grow.

 

“I believe you’ve been alright. And I believe you will be alright.” Jongdae continues. “Just… we’re still here, you know. We’ve always been here. We’ll still be here for a long time. You can always come back and find us. Not accidentally like this.”

 

It grows, and grows. Like a budding hurricane. Like a blooming flower, full of thorns.

 

“You can talk it out. We can talk it out.”

 

_There is no we._

_There is just me._

 

He catches Minseok’s voice, telling Jongdae to stop. Maybe Minseok has sensed it. The storm that is growing inside him.

 

“Okay.” He manages to croak out.

 

Before Jongdae and Minseok could bid him a proper bye, Sehun immediately zooms past them, picking up his pace rapidly. He’d rather suffocate due to the lack of air than the harrowing feeling inside him, bubbling up to his throat. He walks faster, and faster, and even without him noticing it, he’s already running. He runs and runs, his backpack jiggling behind him. His sight is getting blurry.

 

This. This is why he has been playing pretend for the past two years. This is why he has been taking the ‘living in the present’ seriously.

 

Because being entirely aware of his past only keeps the wound open. And if the wound is open for a long time, it’ll get infected, it’ll decay to the point where it’s no longer treatable. By then, the wounded limb would have to be amputated.

 

And by then, he’ll be crippled.

 

And if he’s crippled, he won’t be able to run from the reality by the time he would want and need to.

 

* * *

 

 

He was Hun.

 

To the boys who were the best people in his life, he was Hun.

 

They were always three. Inseparable. Ever since they met at the first year of middle school, they’ve been attached to the hips. Everyone in school knew them as a one entity. Even their parents were close with each other. His sister, being the only sibling the team had, considered the three of them her brothers.

 

At first, it felt like he was trespassing. Like he was invading such a safe, sacred area. The two of them, they had been friends for long before they met him. But they had approached him with genuine gazes and cheerful laughter, making him forget what loneliness was. Even without him realizing it, they had become such a huge part of his life. They were there in his happiest days, they were present in his saddest nights. There was nothing he felt unfitting to tell them. They were his pillars. His source of joy. The colors of his life.

 

He loved them, his beloved friends.

 

But of course, he was young, his feelings were all over the place. He started to question them because it was always different when he looked at each of them. The tingling feeling inside his chest, the churning sensation inside his stomach, the way his heart raced against its own beat. And at the beginning of spring at that year they started their first year of high school, he could finally separate it.

 

For the friend who always laughed the loudest, he loved him.

 

For the friend who always smiled the prettiest, he was _in love_ with him. Had always been.

 

At that spring, Sehun finally dealt with the difference between his feelings for each of them.

 

* * *

 

 

Soak. Rinse. More stain remover liquid.

 

Scrub. Scrub.

 

Scrub harder. Faster.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

Sehun keeps torturing the side of his white sneakers with the brush in his hand. Scrub. Scrub. “Washing my shoes.” He deadpans.

 

“I can see that.” His mother deadpans back, voice echoing against the walls of the laundry room. “But why so sudden?”

 

“They got some mud on them.”

 

“It’s raining outside. Your shoes won’t dry properly.”

 

“I’ll dry them in the dryer machine first then hang them up tomorrow morning.”

 

“Sehun,” his mother’s voice sounds closer this time, “I can do it for you. Aunt Yoon can do it for you.”

 

He rinses his shoe then brings it up closer to inspect it. The canvas area is clean now. The sole, however, looks quite yellowish. Maybe it’s the lighting of the room. Or just the rubber being rubber. “I can do it myself.”

 

For a moment, he thinks his mother is finally dropping the subject off. But then he tenses up when he feels warmth being placed onto his right shoulder. His right arm, which had been brutally abusing his sneaker, falls limp on his laps, and that’s when he finally feels the soreness spreading throughout the limb. “You don’t have to.” She says calmly.

 

“Then what should I do?” he asks back, not even giving a minute for himself to think. “Do you want me to scrub the bathroom floor? It felt quite sticky when I was showering this morning or is it just me –“

 

“Sehun-ah,” his mother calls, and he immediately silences himself, “why don’t you take a nap?”

 

“Huh? I don’t want to.” He answers right away, and regrets it.

 

“Then just rest. Or have some snacks. You don’t have to wash them today, right? You still have another pair.”

 

“Mom.” He finally turns around, almost falling off the short stool he has been sitting on for almost half an hour. “Why aren’t you letting me do this?”

 

Of course, his mother doesn’t answer to it. She stares back at her son, taken aback by the question. “I…” her eyes glances around the room, out of awkwardness and perplexment, before they settle on him again. “I just thought you… I mean, you just got home from school, you must be tired, I… I just thought –“

 

“I need to do something.” He cuts in. “Anything.”

 

“But,” his mother croaks out, “why?”

 

To that, Sehun is finally at loss at what to answer. He does know the answer. If he does nothing, his mind will give room for the recalls of what happened today. And when he thinks of what happened today, he’ll also think of what happened yesterday, and the day before, and it will go on and on. Until he’s back to that day, two years ago.

 

And by the time he does that, he’ll lose it.

 

But he doesn’t want to tell her all of that. Because no matter how much she cares, no matter how much everyone cares, neither she or them would understand.

 

He shakes his head slightly. Distractedly. He doesn’t know what to say anymore. When he looks up, he finds the worry in his mother’s eyes, vivid, dripping. He shrinks smaller and smaller. Now his mother is hurting too. It’s already a nuisance to be hurting all by himself; he can’t spread the pain to others.

 

“I’ll go nap.” He finally says.

 

His mother pulls him into her arms. Does she know? About the storm inside him. Is she pretending she doesn’t know, because she knows he doesn’t want her to? “Wash your hands first.” She reminds him. “The liquid might burn your skin if you leave it dry itself.”

 

* * *

 

 

“She’s really, really, really pretty.”

 

“… yeah.”

 

“Seriously. I mean, _seriously_.” His friend kept whispering to him. “Look at her face. How could someone have that kind of face? She’s like a living doll.”

 

Sehun sighed. “For someone who’s madly in love with Park Chanyeol, I’m surprised you could say all that.”

 

His friend, blushing, pinched his arm. “The fuck you mean?”

 

“Chanyeol looks like an alien.”

 

“Shut up you bitter _frog_.”

 

Sehun massaged the spot on his arm where his friend had pinched hard. His eyes wandered back to the girl – the popular girl, the entire school’s eye candy. Or technically, he wasn’t looking at her; he was looking at the guy she was talking to. The very familiar guy who was saying something to her and making her laugh.

 

He coughed away the acidic feeling that had been bubbling inside him.

 

“What are they talking about anyway?” his friend finally spoke up what was inside his mind. “ _Bambi_ seemed so into it.”

 

“I know, right?” Sehun added without even realizing it. “It’s almost like he’s trying to impress her.”

 

His friend snorted. “And it’s almost like you’re jealous.”

 

Sehun’s breath hitched in an instant. His mind went blank. _Oh shit._

 

His silence made his friend turn at him, almost breaking his neck in the process. “No.” he breathed out dramatically.

 

Looking down over his shoes, Sehun chewed on his bottom lip for a moment before he released out an exasperated sigh. “Yes.”

 

It felt surprisingly nice to say it out like that.

 

His friend balled a hand into a fist and pressed it again his lips, eyes as wide as saucer pans. He stayed like that for a moment until a grin started to break on his face. “I can’t believe it!”

 

“What?” Sehun asked nervously.

 

“That I’m actually right!” his friend clasped his hands together. “That I’ve been right all along!”

 

Sehun blinked at his friend, feeling lost, before he finally understood. He smiled sheepishly. “You could tell, huh?” he said, somehow bitterly. Even his friend could see it, his feelings for _him_. But the one those feelings were directed for couldn’t even sense it.

 

“You’ve got to tell him.” His friend rested a hand on his shoulder. “Tell him as soon as possible!”

 

To that, Sehun stared back at his shoes again. They suddenly seemed more interesting than looking at the main character of the angsty fiction he’s been writing about. “I can’t risk it.”

 

“Risk _what_.” His friend grumbled.

 

“This.” Sehun shrugged. “Us. What we have. What if he doesn’t feel the same? What if I make everything awkward?”

 

He felt his friend retracting his hand before letting out a heavy sigh. “Idiots.” He mumbled.

 

Sehun looked up at him with a frown.

 

“Just tell him. Trust me. Trust me!” his friend put a hand on his chest, like pledging an oath. “You won’t regret it.”

 

It seemed and felt suspicious. His friend was too optimistic. It wasn’t like he was just merely encouraging him. It was like he knew something he didn’t.

 

“Does he… like me too?” he finally braved himself to ask.

 

His friend kept a straight face, but Sehun could see the smirk he tried so hard to hold back. “Not my place to tell.”

 

For the first time of that day, Sehun felt so energized.

 

* * *

 

 

The pot of tofu stew in front of him is still steamy. The red, orangish color is so pretty, he can feel his mouth getting watery. He can’t wait to pour some soup onto his bowl of rice. Soup-soaked rice is the best. Especially when it’s spicy with a little hint of sourness from drops of citrus.

 

“Let’s start, everyone.” His father’s voice signals the end of the prayer. Sehun immediately reaches for the stew first. He scoops a handful of soup and tofu slices that jiggle along with the movement of the ladle, then carefully pours them onto his bowl. He feels like he could actually finish the dinner just with the stew only.

 

“Sehun-ah, have you prepared your things for tomorrow?” Serin’s voice makes him look up. “Spare clothes? Snacks?”

 

He chuckles. “I’m not going for some camping, noona.” He muses before he takes a spoonful of soup-soaked rice and tofu bits.

 

Serin pouts at her brother. “Still.”

 

“Do you really have to stay back until midnight?” his mother adds in. “I know the teachers are preparing all of you for the big exam but isn’t it too much?”

 

“Mom,” he says after gulping down, “the school always does this. It won’t be my first time.”

 

“Should I pick you up by then? Going home alone at midnight is dangerous.” His father is the one speaking this time.

 

“It’s alright, the train would still be crowded by then. Just wait for me at the station.” He says before finally paying attention to the steamed fish next to the stew. The meat looks chewy. He almost drools.

 

But before he could even pick his chopsticks up, Serin is already peeling off an amount of meat from the bones. She puts it on his bowl. “Eat and grow, child.”

 

Sehun smiles sheepishly at her before he picks up his spoon again and scoops the fish meat along with rice. For a while, the silence settles down onto the atmosphere around them. There are only the clatters of the utensils and Serin’s ‘ _eat this too_ ’ as she constantly drops fish meat and kimchi onto his bowl. It’s comfortable, almost too comfortable, until Sehun notices that their dinners have never been this quiet. It’s usually filled with Serin’s light bickers with his mother and his father telling them about some interesting stuffs that happened at the office. An unpleasant feeling builds at the pit of his stomach, but he ignores it because _damn, mom’s tofu stew is a blessing_.

 

“So, the memorial would be the day after tomorrow.”

 

His hand freezes for a split of second. But he continues to feed himself. _Oh. So this is why_.

 

“I and Han’s mom will go to shop for the food ingredients tomorrow.” His mother says.

 

He waits for his father to speak too. And he does, after an awkward pause. “Serin, will you be helping with the cleaning and decorations?”

 

“Yes, dad.” His sister answers with a small voice.

 

Sehun picks up the ladle on the pot to scoop up some soup. He pours them onto his bowl again. He frowns. Now the ratio is ruined. The rice isn’t even with the soup anymore. They’re floating on the surface of the liquid. It’ll be difficult to scoop them. Maybe he should add more rice.

 

“Sehun?” his father calls for him. “Do you think you can pick up the flowers at the shop? The memorial won’t start until ten in the morning, I’m sure you’d be well rested by then. You won’t be going alone, anyway. You’ll go with –“

 

“Can I get more rice?” Sehun finally looks up. “But I think I need a new bowl. I’ve already poured too much soup in this one.”

 

His mother is stunned for a moment. “Sure, dear.” She immediately grabs the bowl from the corner of the table and scoops some rice to fill it with. “You seem quite hungry.”

 

“The stew is just so delicious.” He grins, making his mother smile.

 

“Sehun?” his father calls again. “You can make it, right?”

 

Sehun nods enthusiastically as his mother hands him the new bowl of rice. “Yeah.” He shrugs. “I just need someone to wake me up.”

 

“Good.” His father nods back at him. “We should do anything we could to help.”

 

“It’s been two years.” His mother says, sounding melancholic. “It’s been so hard on them.”

 

His father sighs softly. “Let’s be thankful that we are here today, complete, looking at each other.”

 

He can feel Serin’s stare on him. He ignores it. He keeps chewing and chewing, and finally notices something. He pauses for a moment. Why does it feel bland? Did he scoop too much rice that he can’t taste the soup? He scoops up an amount of soup and slurps it in. It’s still bland. The food feels heavy on his tongue instead. He decides to stop chewing and just gulp it down. Is he even gulping down? Why does everything taste weird out of sudden?

 

“Sehun,” his father’s voice surprises him slightly, “is everything okay with your friend?”

 

“Hm?” he chews more before he gulps down. “Jongin? Yeah, why?”

 

His father holds his gaze on him. “No, son. Your other friend, H –”

 

“Jongin is my only friend. I’m kind of a loner at school.”

 

“You know who we are talking about.”

 

“Noona, why aren’t you giving me the fish meat –“

 

“He said both of you have been well.” His father continues. “It’s true, right?”

 

“Honey,” he hears his mother whispering. It’s funny how he can ignore his father’s voice but can’t even pretend not to hear his mother’s whisper.

 

Sehun smiles at his father. It hurts when he smiles like this, but he doesn’t know how else to respond. “Yeah we’re good.”

 

He notices the way his father’s jaw stiffens. He ignores it, as usual, before he gets on his bowl of rice again. Serin has put some fish meat on it. He was about to scoop them onto the spoon when he hears his father’s voice again, and the tone freezes him.

 

“Son. Are you alright?”

 

It’s a simple question, to be honest. It gets used for so many times, in so many occasions. It’s what his mother had asked when he coughed a little bit louder than he should’ve. It’s what his sister had asked when he hit his knee against the edge of the coffee table in the living room. It’s what his father had asked when they were cleaning the small garden at the back of their house. It’s simple, so simple it’s often used out of habit.

 

But this is not a simple talk. This is not some random occasion. Thus, Sehun feels himself reacting to the question in such unpleasant way.

 

_Now you’re bothered to ask?_

 

_What do you expect me to answer it with?_

 

“I am.” He says. The words taste like sand on his tongue.

 

“Dear,” he turns at his mother, “is there something you want to tell us?”

 

Sehun shakes his head. Not even giving it the second thought. “I don’t think there is.”

 

“You’re trying to avoid this conversation.” His father points out, and Sehun almost rolls his eyes in exasperation. “Is everything really alright between you and –“

 

“I’m telling you I’m fine.” Sehun says casually. “ _We_ are fine. Nothing to worry about.”

 

The silence that follows is irking. Uncomfortable. Everything boils inside Sehun; he really hates being the center of unpleasant attention like this. And he surely hates being the one who ruins the good mood in the house. He gulps down the imaginary lump in his throat, its spikes scarring him, hurting him. He stares at his bowl of food. The fish meat is resting on top of the rice, soaked with soup. He finds them strange now. Was he eating them? Was he eating? What was he doing up until this moment? What was going on before he ruined the night for his family?

 

It’s all his fault. It has always been his fault.

 

Feeling new strength flooding his body, he stands up abruptly, pushing the chair backwards with a loud screech. “I’m done.” He announces, his voice sounding like an automated robot. “I’ll wash the dishes later.” He murmurs. He’s about to step away from the dining table when he realizes he’s still holding the spoon in his hand. Gently, he places them on the table, then he catches his mother staring up at him in vivid worry. He can’t even muster up a smile. “Thanks, mom.” He just says before he walks away from the dining table.

 

He wonders what he’s doing.

 

He doesn’t really think. He just goes to the direction his senses are telling him to go to. Then he notices he’s already standing right before the entrance door of his house.

 

He wonders what he’s actually doing.

 

“Where are you going?”

 

He jolts in surprise, turning around immediately to find the source of the voice. Serin is standing there, face filled with worry. He curses at himself. Now Serin is hurting, too, because of him.

 

“I’m,” he stops talking when he realizes how dry his throat is; he hasn’t been drinking anything since they started eating, “just… a walk.”

 

“You’re taking a walk?”

 

Sehun nods, feeling foolish.

 

Nodding, Serin extends a hand towards him; she’s handing him a phone. Hers. “I’ll call you from your phone. Don’t get back too late, okay?”

 

He takes the phone from her hand. “I’m sorry.” He whispers.

 

Serin shakes her head slowly with a smile. “Be careful.”

 

Without any word, Sehun just spins around on his heels and goes out through the door. He puts a pair of slippers on hastily; he doesn’t know who they belong to. He just steps on them repeatedly until they fit around his feet and climbs down the short steps of the porch. It’s already dark outside, save for the streetlamps that are illuminating the block. The paved way that connects the porch to the entrance gate is wet; the rain stopped only a while ago. The gate makes an obnoxious screeching sound when he pulls it open. He could’ve fixed it with some oil if only his mother had let him do something previously.

 

He walks and walks, noticing how familiar yet also foreign the neighborhood feels. Dull gray paving stones, duller gray concrete walls that have been repainted with various colors throughout the years, enough streetlamps at ever four meters – some have white bulbs, some have yellow ones. Nothing much has changed ever since they moved in here almost six years ago. It’s ruthless. Nothing has changed noticeably in this neighborhood no matter how many times the concrete walls get repainted or the bulbs of the streetlamp poles get replaced, but so much has changed in his life when it’s only missing one aspect. Everything is so familiar, yet so foreign at the same time.

 

For the past two years, it always felt like he’s been living someone else’s life.

 

Somehow, he’s already reaching the end of the block without him noticing it. In front of him is the main street. Various types of vehicles zoom past him; it’s the hour of getting off work for lots of people. Busy streets, busy city, busy lives. Millions of people, millions of individuals, millions of problems. Millions of racers who are competing against time in vain.

 

This city is so big, yet he’s stuck in his own little world. The time is running; it’s always running, taking everyone with it, but somehow it had decided to leave him behind.

 

He walks, pace inconsistent, head full of white noise, heart hammering against his ribcage, breath heavy. The fingers of his right hand are still wrapped tightly around the device his sister had handed him earlier. He wonders what he’s really doing out here, at almost 8 in the evening, clad in blue striped white sweater and black sweatpants, wearing his father’s slippers – he recognizes them now. He realizes that he’s still holding Serin’s phone in his hand. He shoves it into the pocket of his sweatpants. The device feels quite warm through the fabric after being held for too long.

 

And when he looks up, it _finally_ downs onto his head that he’s actually out in the open space, right on the sidewalk of the main street, where cars are passing from left to right and otherwise. A sedan passes by, almost too close to where he stands, the force of air it made when it had ripped through it hits him and shakes his entire body. He stumbles backwards. It’s night, and he’s on a sidewalk.

 

The last time he was in this situation, he ended up witnessing something that stayed inside his head until this second, changing his life, turning him into someone he couldn’t recognize.

 

There’s something lulling to him from the way the vehicles are passing by each other. Eventually they make a pattern in his head. A rhythm. A constant beat. Like the intro to a song. And the intro to a song is supposed to lull listeners into listening more until they hear the entire song. It’s attracting Sehun more and more. The pace. The pattern. It invites him over.

 

Thus, he starts walking.

 

He takes a baby step, the slipper grazing the pavement with a rustling sound. Another step. He’s already at the edge of the elevated pavement. One more step. His right leg is resting on the asphalt. One last step. He’s on the streets now.

 

He remembers seeing a pair of wobbly legs walking across the street in desperation. Maybe he should try it. Crossing the street. See where it would lead him to. Maybe it could be his way out of this strange world. What if he’s been sucked into an artificial existence for two years and he’s meant to get out of it?

 

What if he’s not meant to stay here?

 

What if he can actually get out?

 

“The crossing line is still far away.”

 

Something gets ripped out of him. Maybe the lulling effect. The charm. The hex. Sehun takes in an amount of air into his respiratory system, and he gets overwhelmed by it. His breaths get erratic. He turns to his right side, wanting to know the source of the voice that had pulled him away from the trance earlier.

 

“Why were you even there?” the guy continues with a friendly tone. “You weren’t going to cross the street from there, right?”

 

Sehun finds it funny, how life works. Two years ago, almost exactly two years ago, it was like this too. Him, standing on the sidewalk, with someone next to him. It’s like a cruel reminder of the biggest sin in his life.

 

He shakes his head.

 

“Cool.” The guy smiles at him; it looked warm under the illumination of moonlight and streetlamps. “Didn’t expect to meet you again here.”

 

Luhan looks like he was on his way from a night out with his friends, judging from the way he’s dressed. He looks like someone who’s living the best out of his youth. Sehun feels a surge of jealousy and resentment swirling inside him for a moment. But they dissipate right away when he notices that Luhan is still waiting for a response. Any kind of response. “Me too.” He ends up replying monotonically.

 

Giving out a laugh that sounds like it was forced out of politeness, Luhan scans him from head to toe. “Are you okay?” the friendly tone switches into an alarmed one.

 

 _No._ “Yeah, of course.” Sehun then gets what Luhan could be thinking of. “I’m not running away from home or anything. Just decided to take a walk.”

 

Luhan nods with a knowing smile. “Okay.” He says. “Are you planning on going back soon?”

 

Sehun stays mum for a moment. He didn’t think of that first.

 

“If you aren’t,” Luhan starts to walk closer to him, “let me treat you some drink there.” He points at something behind him. Sehun turns around and sees the convenience store Luhan was talking about.

 

Something inside him screams refusal. _What are you doing? Are you serious? After these two shitty years you suddenly want to be like this? After everything?_

 

“I want coffee.” He says.

 

Luhan looks a little bit bewildered by his request. As if he didn’t expect him to say that. But Luhan quickly gains his composure back and flashes another smile at him. “Sounds good to me. I’m getting some coffee too.”

 

He hopes this is a good idea.

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Friday (Part Two)

 

It drizzles.

 

He’s seating on the stool that faces the view outside convenience store. Sehun finds it fascinating to be watching them through the huge glass wall, like he’s actually standing under the said drizzle without getting drenched. He can barely see the small drops of water, but he pretends that they’re visible enough to steal his attention.

 

A moment later, he catches Luhan’s reflection on the glass. He spontaneously looks down over the white surface of the high table, waiting until Luhan puts their drinks on it to look up again. Luhan flashes him a small smile.

 

His heart hammers again inside his chest. This time, it’s not caused by suffocation and other negative feelings alike. For the first time in two years, his heart skips a beat because of something delicate, something innocent; something he never thought is still there inside him.

 

“Go on.” Luhan gestures at the cup of coffee.

 

Blinking away the thoughts, Sehun immediately reaches for the cup. “Thanks again. Really.”

 

Luhan doesn’t say anything. He just proceeds to sip his own drink; but Sehun notices the way the corner of his lip curls.

 

They settle for another silence between. A comfortable one. Just like the one that surrounded them on the way to the convenience store earlier. There’s the faint sound from the TV hanging on the wall, above the cashier. And the soft whirl of air from the AC at the corner of the room. A man not too far behind him, standing at the beverages aisle, just opened a can of soda. Sehun could get used to this. A form of calmness filled with various white noises, with the presence of someone who is amiable with him. He wonders for a moment why he never thought of this. Just because they’re strangers, it doesn’t mean they are obligated to be foreign to each other.

 

“It was like this,” Luhan suddenly speaks, and Sehun catches the moment he nudges his chin towards the view outside, “when I lost a friend.”

 

Sehun feels something sinking onto the bottom of his stomach.

 

“It was a great day, actually.” The soft, honey-like voice continues. Luhan doesn’t glance at him, but it seems like he knows he has Sehun’s attention now. “We got out of school late. Nothing out of the ordinary. I can’t really remember now, what was the last thing we talked about. But I’m sure he had told me this before we parted in front of the school gate; ‘today will be great for you’.”

 

_‘Promise me you’ll do it today!’_

 

A soft, bitter smile spreads on Luhan’s lips. “I believed him. I went home in a good mood. And it really turned out to be a great day, you know. Something good happened to me.” Eyelashes flutter out of habit; Luhan is pretty, he realizes out of the blue as he watches him from the side. “That was… until night came.”

 

‘ _Can you wait for me there?_ ’

 

“I got a call. From someone.” Luhan pauses a little, and Sehun could feel the weight starting to sink down onto the conversation. “Said that my friend was in the hospital. I was told that I should go there as fast as I could. And I did. It was like a flew there. Begged my dad to drive me there. My mom ended up tagging along. It was chaotic.” He decorates the last sentence with an awkward laugh.

 

Sehun doesn’t shift his gaze even an inch. His eyes stay on Luhan’s face; on the tip of his button nose, on the movements of his lips, on the long eyelashes that would blink from second to second.

 

“He died at midnight.” A sigh accompanies the revelation. “Just like that. He left. Just a few hours before, he waved at me before walking home. Then the next time I saw him, he was already covered with something white, from head to toe. Like he was an inanimate object. A prop. Everyone was crying. I didn’t. Couldn’t. I wasn’t even sure what was happening. Did my friend really die? Was that even him? How could they be so sure?”

 

‘ _Am I dreaming? Sehun-ah… are we dreaming? How… how do we wake up?_ ’

 

“Ten years, gone in a second. We had been friends since forever, you know. I couldn’t recall any milestone in my life where he wasn’t present. He was there. He was always there for me. Never, even once, did he ever leave me alone when I needed him. Even that one time when we weren’t in good terms, he immediately ran to my house when he heard I fell sick. He was… who he was. A loyal friend. My soulmate, I’d dare to say.” Luhan chuckles; it sounds painful. “He was bright. Too bright. So when he left, everything became dim. In his house. Even in my house. In school. In everywhere. Inside me. There hasn’t been a day in my life that passed without me thinking of him. He’s still here,” Luhan put a hand against his chest, then brings the hand up to tap his head, “and here.”

 

Then Luhan turns to his side, at him. Sehun freezes on his spot. Doe eyes stare back at him with warmth. Luhan is pretty.

 

“Isn’t it too early for you to tell me that?” Sehun says gently, carefully. “We only talked once.”

 

Luhan smiles at him. “Because you seem like the type of person who is bad at giving consolation.” He muses. “And I don’t need to be consoled. I just need to be heard.”

 

Sehun laughs lightly, somehow finding this conversation amusing. “And how could you tell that I’m bad at consoling people?”

 

“Well, you’re just awkward as a whole.”

 

“Yeah, I agree.”

 

“What about you, though?” Luhan asks out of the blue. “What is your story? I’ve shared mine. Now you might share yours.”

 

Sehun had expected it; the suggestion, the inquiry. He had sensed it would come in the end. It was foreshadowed at the moment Luhan started to share his story even without him asking for it. But still, the moment he realizes that Luhan is really implying that he could also share his part, he freezes. A gush of air leaves his system. He’s petrified without even knowing what exactly it is that he’s being afraid of.

 

Luhan’s gaze on him is calm, mildly warm, understanding, patient.

 

Maybe it’s him that is importuning himself.

 

He parts his lips, making way for inaudible words to come out. Then it downs to him that he can’t do it. He can’t talk about it. Just yet.

 

He can’t. Doesn’t want to. Wishes he’d never have to.

 

“Not today, huh?” Luhan concludes for him instead.

 

 _Never, I hope_. He nods.

 

“It’s fine.” Delicate looking hand waves at him nonchalantly. “How about someone special, hm? Someone you like. You can tell me that too.”

 

“Why are you fishing stories out of me?”

 

Luhan looks a little bit caught off-guard. He shifts his gaze immediately over the cup on the table before them. Sehun regrets his words immediately. He doesn’t want to ruin the night. He doesn’t want to ruin the thing between them for the moment. He doesn’t want to ruin _anything_ again. “Talking steals your mind away from darker thoughts.” Luhan murmurs at him.

 

_See?_

_Why are you always so damn impulsive like this, Oh Sehun?_

_Haven’t you hurt enough amount of people?_

 

“I had one.” He says before gulping out of habit.

 

Luhan raises an eyebrow at him instantly. “You _had_ one?”

 

Sehun nods.

 

“… oh.” Luhan mumbles. The already translucent light on his face dims more for a split of second before the friendly look is back again. “What happened?”

 

He finds himself asking the same question. _What actually happened?_

 

“It didn’t work out.” Sehun murmurs out.

 

“It didn’t work out.” Luhan repeats, pinning it as a statement, and somehow it sounds like he would use it against him later.

 

Sehun shrugs, not really knowing how to react, what to say more. What was there to say more about it, anyway?

 

“But did that person feel the same?”

 

He glances at Luhan. That was an unexpected question. He didn’t think he would ever get asked about that, and he never really thought about it. Luhan’s gaze is still as calm and patient as ever. But why is his heartbeat so fast it feels like he’s running?

 

“Does it matter?” he manages to voice out.

 

Luhan replies with a soft smile first. “Does it not?”

 

’ _Tonight. I’ll answer tonight. Will you wait for me?_ ’

 

The atmosphere around them is a still water; none of them do anything, in fear of causing ripples. Sehun starts to notice the twinkle in Luhan’s eyes. They’re dim, faint, but they’re there, and it looks like they used to be brighter, to flicker more. But there’s also this glint of hope that accompanies them. Maybe there was a time when they went out completely, when Luhan lost his friend. He wonders how did Luhan do it; how did Luhan pick himself back up and appear to be okay like this.

 

Maybe that’s the difference between them. Luhan had the will, while he has nothing left.

 

“Nothing seemed to be right for us, now to think about it.” He tells Luhan. He leans forward over the table, resting his whole left arm on the surface before he folds the said arm and rests his head on it. His eyes look up at Luhan, almost droopy, finally letting the sleepiness start to cloud around him. “It was as if the whole universe didn’t want us to be together.”

 

Luhan’s face breaks into a light laughter. The corners of his eyes crinkle along the mirth that dances in his once dim eyes. Now they look brighter. Much brighter. It sends a certain kind of tingling feeling into Sehun’s chest. It’s as if he misses this. All of this. “That was so… cheesy.”

 

There was nothing funny about it. He was telling the honest way he had seen it. Like they were never meant to be together and if they try they’d get hurt. But Sehun laughs, its sound gets magnified as it echoes against the surface of the table. He laughs because Luhan laughed, because for a moment, he does find the humor in it. “Yeah. Sorry. Gosh it was gross.”

 

For the very first time, he finds humor in it. Maybe because now he sees how ridiculous everything was.

 

“Let’s say that person feels the same.” Luhan pauses to take a sip of his now cold coffee. “Would you go against the universe?”

 

The mirth in Luhan’s eyes swirl back into blackness.

 

“Would you actually tell the… universe, about your feelings? And if you get hurt while at it, would that person worth it all?”

 

Sehun is still hunched, bent over the table, his body crooked in the weirdest way. His eyes feel a little bit heavier now, as they stare back at Luhan, who now has the elbow of his right arm on the table, resting his chin on his palm. For a moment, the only thing they exchange is a gaze, and the atmosphere that settles on them is drowsy, almost somber. The apple of Luhan’s left cheek has this little white dot on it as the result of the bright lamp on the ceilings; the faint rosy hues aren’t there anymore. Sehun misses the laughter from seconds ago. He misses a lot of things. And that’s the only thing he could do; miss everything.

 

“I would.” Sehun breaks the silence, being careful with his words since he never really thought about it properly. “I really would. Tell the universe. That I love _him_.”

 

The right corner of Luhan’s lips curls up.

 

“But the thing is, I couldn’t. Or I… don’t want to. And it’s not because he isn’t worth it,”

 

 _‘Isn’t he so brave, Hun-ah?_ ’

 

“but because I’d really get hurt. I’m going to be in pain. The pain won’t be caused by the universe itself. The pain would be because of me. I’d hurt myself if I speak out my feelings.”

 

Luhan tilts his head. His eyes are as calm as always. “How so?”

 

Sehun feels a _pang_ inside his chest. He tries to think of an answer, making his brain work. But no words are formed. No idea does justice to the exact truth. How so? Why? Why would it hurt him to shout his feelings out, to admit that he _loves_ that person? He forces his head to think, and think, and _think_.

 

“The day I finally admitted about my feelings,” he says through a whisper, “I lost someone very important.”

 

He watches as Luhan closes his eyes.

 

“Even to this second, whenever I am reminded of my feelings, I’d end up recalling that day. The day I don’t want to remember. If I do remember, I’d feel… extremely overwhelmed.”

 

“Extremely overwhelmed.”

 

“Meaning that I won’t be able to breathe.”

 

Luhan opens his eyes, and Sehun finds no trace of the mirth from earlier. The weight of the conversation gets heavier. “May I ask you something?”

 

Sehun shrugs.

 

“Your feelings, did they have something to do with you losing that someone important?” Luhan’s voice is so light, unlike the feeling inside him. “Were your feelings the reason you lost that someone?”

 

Immediately, Sehun shakes his head. Something inside him breaks just by the thought of it.

 

“Then,” Luhan licks his lips for a second, “isn’t it a shame that the hurt you felt from losing that someone keeps you from speaking your feelings out?”

 

If it was calm before, now it’s almost like everything has stilled.

 

“Isn’t it a little bit unfair? For the person you love. For you too.”

 

“You…” Sehun croaks out a whisper, raspy and tired. “You think so?”

 

Luhan shrugs, the small smile hasn’t left his lips. “Maybe it was never the universe that didn’t want the both of you to be together. Maybe it’s the both of you. Maybe it has been you and _him_ , who forbade yourselves from being with each other.”

 

A swirl of something unpleasant starts to thunder inside his chest; it steadily grows into a storm. He feels rage and resentment, but over it all, he feels an overwhelming amount of tiredness. He’s tired, of always trying to justify everything that happened, to rationalize his decisions, to assure himself that he was right, that what he had chosen to do was right. He has no defense left. He’s bare, and in pain. “How,” he murmurs, “how could you say that?”

 

For a moment, the pair of doe eyes that stare back at him are familiar. Like he was so used to look back into them for years. Like he could tell the exact color they have despite the lights above them. Like the person in front of him is someone who knows what he feels, whom he could pour all of his emotions to.

 

“How could you say that?” he repeats, tearfully. “You know nothing. You know nothing. Nothing. You don’t know. You’re not supposed to know anything. You know nothing.”

 

It bothers him, how Luhan doesn’t lose the calmness on his face. His doe eyes stay unwavering. He wonders how Luhan could do it. “Do I?” soft voice asks.

 

Sehun doesn’t know what to answer.

 

Luhan brings up his left arm and glances at the watch around his wrist. “Oh, look at the time.” He chuckles. “I’ve got to go. Promised my mom I’d help with some stuffs.” He detaches his chin from his palm, straightens his back and stretches his arms outwards. “See you on Monday, I guess?”

 

He wants to tell Luhan that he’ll be on the train tomorrow, but he witnesses the friendly look on Luhan’s face changes into a sheer of shock. He wonders what is wrong at first, before he realizes that it’s him; tears are streaming down his face without him knowing.

 

“Was I too much?” Luhan asks with a small voice, sounding so guilty. “I’m so sorry, I – please don’t cry.”

 

Sehun immediately straightens his back up, wiping away the tears on his face harshly. He uses his sleeves to dry the remnants. He feels bewildered, slightly resentful, because this is the first time in a long while that his tears just flow freely even without him meaning them to. He hasn’t cried for long. He isn’t even crying at the moment; just water drops mimicking the ones outside. Maybe his heart is being too weary tonight; maybe it seeks for some release, for some way to unleash the accumulated emotions inside.

 

“No,” he murmurs, “it’s not you. Don’t worry.”

 

Luhan is still looking down at him, worry still evident on his face. “I think it is.” Luhan whispers, but he says nothing to it, for he feels that Luhan isn’t expecting any reply either.

 

Feeling his eyes getting warmed and watery again, Sehun lifts up his arm and presses the back of his hand against his closed eyelids. He then stands up abruptly, the chair making a screeching sound as he pushes it backwards in a rather violent way. For a moment, he can’t gather up the scattered pieces inside him; he feels like he might just drop onto the floor and succumb into the black hole that has been hovering above him for two years. But he gains his composure back, and braves himself to look at Luhan in the eyes. “Can I,” he croaks out, “can I leave first?”

 

 _I’m tired of seeing someone walking away from me_.

 

It’s not the right decision, though. His heart wrenches more when he sees the worry and sadness still vivid in Luhan’s beautiful orbs. _Pretty eyes shouldn’t be looking that sad_. Then Luhan nods at him, taking two steps backwards to give him a way. Nothing comes out of Luhan’s mouth anymore. Sehun appreciates it.

 

The steps he takes to pass Luhan by are heavy. He could smell the perfume on Luhan’s denim jacket. He can see the thin black stripes on the white tee behind the jacket and the fashionably ripped parts of Luhan’s jeans. He notices the dark grey color of Luhan’s sneakers; maybe Luhan, too, didn’t want to wear white shoes, afraid to stain them while walking. In a few seconds that he took to walk in front of Luhan, he sees everything. And he wonders if he ever looked at Luhan completely; if he ever really looked instead of just seeing or staring.

 

He stops right before the glass door. He spins around, finding Luhan still standing still on his spot, looking at him with gentle yet weary eyes. Just moments ago, they were sharing laughter with each other. And now everything is this way. He really is good at ruining someone’s day, apparently.

 

“It wasn’t you.” he exclaims, loud enough for Luhan to hear and widen his eyes at him for. “It was never you.”

 

The mild surprise in Luhan’s eyes dissolves into an even gentler look; Sehun doesn’t ponder about it further. He gets back to the door and pushes it open, shivering when the cold air hits him. The water drops are already gone, leaving only the iciness and humid scent behind. For a moment, he feels disoriented, directionless. He gathers his thoughts back and finally recognizes which way he should go through to get home. After steadying himself, he starts to walk away from the convenience store.

 

Not even once does he look back.

 

He’s scared to.

 

=

 

He ends up standing like a statue on the porch of his house for a long while.

 

He just can’t bring himself to open the door and get in. Maybe he’s not ready to see the faces of people he had let down a couple of hours ago. He’s not ready to deal with the disappointment he feels towards himself yet. If he hasn’t passed through the door, he could still be shameless like this.

 

However, not in his favor, the door opens, revealing his father. The man also stays still under the doorframe. The two of them look at each other for moment, before his father also steps out of the house. Sehun frowns, confused.

 

His father still doesn’t say a thing to him. The man just quietly goes for the wooden bench that rests at the corner of the porch, dragging his steps while at it. Sehun watches as the man sits down at one end, and then finally looks at him. It then downs to him that his father wants him to sit with him. And so, he does.

 

They still don’t say anything for another while. Naturally, Sehun feels the nervousness bubbling up inside him, but somehow, unlike at the dinner, he also feels calm and assured. This is the way his father approaches him whenever the man knows his son needs to be listened more than to listen. And maybe that’s what is calming him down; he knows his father’s intention is good.

 

“It’s been two years.” The man starts, and Sehun gulps. “We didn’t even realize it, but it’s been two years.”

 

 _I know_.

 

“One day, their son was walking out of the door, going to school.” A heavy sigh escapes his father’s lips. “The next thing they find, their son is already under a white sheet, on the hospital bed.”

 

_I know. I know._

 

“I never asked what happened. None of us ever asked them what exactly happened. They wouldn’t have known either. All they knew was that they lost their son. Their only child. Seventeen years of happiness, gone in one night.”

 

Sehun feels some kind of déjà vu. He must’ve heard something similar to that.

 

“And all I know,” his father’s voice gets clearer, and that’s when he notices that the man is facing him now, “is that my son keeps saying that it was his fault. That everything was his fault. That he could’ve prevented it from happening.”

 

Now he feels betrayed. His father’s intention might not be so good at all.

 

“It was an accident. Pure accident. It wasn’t even a hit-and-run case; the driver turned himself in after he brought the victim to the hospital. Witnesses all had the same statement. It was pure accident. Bad timing, bad situation. Bad luck, they said. But my son, _you_ ,” his father pauses for a moment, “you kept saying, more to yourself, that it was your fault. That went on for days. Maybe weeks. Then one day, you stopped talking about it altogether. Like nothing happened. Like it wasn’t your _friend_ who had died. Like you’ve become someone else.”

 

_Do I stand up or do I stay? Do I run? Should I run?_

 

“I never asked you either, why would you say that. Why you blamed himself. What happened actually. I couldn’t. And I thought, as long as you don’t harm your own feelings anymore, you’d be okay. I thought I could just watch for you from afar. There was nothing I could say or do to make things better after all. But today, I finally saw what was wrong.”

 

Sehun holds his breath.

 

“I never asked.” His father puts up a soft smile. “I never asked you what happened, what you feel.”

 

 _I don’t want you to_.

 

“Maybe you don’t want me to. But I have to ask, and you have to answer. Maybe not everything. At least tell me why you think it was your fault. I need to understand you, to see from your point of view. I’m asking you to trust me, to be assured that I won’t judge you or anything you’d say.”

 

 _I don’t trust you_.

 

“You might not trust me. But maybe you can try.” His father straightens his back. “Let’s start tonight, Sehun-ah. Let’s take baby steps from tonight.”

 

 _‘Sehun-ah_.’

 

He gets weak whenever his father calls him that.

 

Because it means that his father is being extremely gentle with him, which also means that his father had actually seen how broken he is.

 

“Why did you blame yourself for what happened to your friend?

 

What happened… to _Baekhyun_?”

 

 

 

Baekhyun.

 

To his family, he was their sunshine, Baekhyun.

 

To his school friends and teachers, he was the bright kid Byun Baekhyun.

 

Between the three of them, he was _Hyun_ , as how Sehun was _Hun_.

 

Baekhyun was a walking energy ball. He was full of smiles, full of laughter, full of aspiration to make everyone around him smile and laugh. He got drunk on people’s happiness, and that was why he always tried to bring the joy out of everybody he knew.

 

Baekhyun loved the season Summer. He loved it so dearly. He said instead of the Spring, flowers showed off their colors the best in Summer. He loved the warm air, the ‘scent’ of the sunlight, the way he had to squint his eyes to walk through an open space due to the brightness. He even loved the rain in that particular season. Maybe he became that bright because he loved such bright season.

 

Baekhyun was kind. Baekhyun was honest. He was genuine, so genuine that it always warmed up Sehun’s heart. Sehun always thought Baekhyun was a miracle. He thought a friend, an individual like Baekhyun was one of a kind, that not everybody was gifted with such blessing. And he was thankful that he could exist at the same time that Baekhyun did.

 

Baekhyun was there, in his days, ever since he moved into the district, ever since he attended the middle school where he met him. Baekhyun was there in his happiest moments, and he was present in his lowest hours. With Baekhyun, it was his best four years.

 

Baekhyun was there.

 

And one day, Baekhyun was gone.

 

 

 

He feels something prickling against the flesh of his throat at the mention of that name.

 

Two years. He had spent two years trying to avoid that certain name. Two years of denying that the name meant so much to him. Two years of playing pretend that he never knew it. Even his family had played along with him, until tonight. Maybe his father has had enough.

_Should I tell?_

 

He trusts him; his father. He knows what kind of a person his father is. Who he doesn’t trust is himself; he doesn’t trust himself to break down the truth and _not_ give in to the temptation of making the whole story indicate that he was, after all, the cause of the sufferings of people around him. Was he not, anyway?

 

Sehun doesn’t realize how his hands have been tangled with each other on his laps, thumbs nudging, poking, pressing harshly against each other. He doesn’t realize how his throat has went dry, almost stinging. He doesn’t realize how his right leg has been bouncing steadily on a rhythm that seems to be speeding up the more the seconds pass. He doesn’t realize how anxious he has been.

 

Maybe he can tell. He doesn’t have to let everything out after all, like his father said. He can just say something that would satisfy his father for the meantime. Or something that would fish out a harsher response, something that would make his father stop asking.

 

“It was…” he croaks out, voice almost inaudible that his father leans a little bit closer towards him, “it was because…”

 

His father waits for him patiently, or so it seems. Everyone has been patient with him. It’s himself that has never been.

 

“I…” Sehun gulps down the imaginary lump in his throat, “he liked someone. Back then.” He adds, paying attention to the change of expression on his father’s face; the man seems a little bit confused. “Chanyeol. _He_ liked him. And I told him… I told him to tell Chanyeol. I told him that.”

 

 

 

“ _Don’t you think it’s too soon?_ ”

 

Sehun snorted against the speaker of his phone. “Dude, you’ve been crushing on him like, what, two years? Remember how you teared up when you found out Park was attending the same high school with us?”

 

“ _Shut the hell up!_ ” Baekhyun shrieked. Sehun pulled his phone away from his ear, laughing in amusement. “ _You don’t have the right to be this confident just because things are going well for you!_ ”

 

“Who said that? It’s still not for sure yet.” Sehun rolled his eyes, gently kicking the lowest metal bar of the gate to his house. “I have to wait for tonight. Gosh. It’s killing me.”

 

“ _Should I suffer like you too?_ ”

 

Sehun smirked, although technically Baekhyun couldn’t see it. “Of course you should.” He giggled. “I’m serious, corgi butt. Just tell him. Tell Chanyeol how you feel.”

 

There was silence for a moment. Baekhyun must’ve been thinking. “ _What if it’s not as easy as you two?_ ” he heard his friend’s small voice. “ _What if it goes… bad?_ ”

 

He sighed. It really wasn’t easy, after all. It wasn’t just any cliché case of a boy confessing to a girl. It was a boy, wanting to express his honest feelings to another boy, and no matter how wonderful and accepting people in social medias made the matter looked like, the real life was still and would always be a thousand times harsher and… realer. It was the real deal in real life. Love was love, really, but it was hard to uphold that saying when people around you couldn’t comprehend it from the perspective it wanted everyone to see from. He understood Baekhyun’s worries. He, too, had felt it that morning.

 

“If anything goes bad, call me. I’ll go to you, or you can come to me.” Sehun said, assuring. “You’re not alone, okay?”

 

There was another moment of silence before Baekhyun replied with a weak yet somehow determined voice. “ _Okay, Hunnie._ ”

 

“Now go for it!”

 

 

 

“But it didn’t go well. Chanyeol… that guy… he must’ve said something that made him ran away. He called me. Asked me what to do. So I told him to meet me at the end of his block, that one that leads to the main street, you know that, right, Dad? The one we used to –“

 

His father nods repeatedly, putting a hand gently on his shoulder.

 

Sehun inhales some air to feed his lungs. Apparently, he’s been suffocating. “And he got there, and he was standing across the street, and he… he walked to me, but he – that stupid kid, he didn’t even take a look to his left and right, he just –“

 

 

 

“Stay there!” Sehun shouted, hoping Baekhyun could hear him. But there were quite a lot of vehicles passing in front of him. He waited impatiently until the traffic lessened. There, he could finally see his dear friend, across the street, quite clearly under the streetlamp.

 

Baekhyun looked broken. Scared. Severely broken. So foreign with the Baekhyun he always saw.

 

 _Oh no_.

 

He was about to move when he noticed Baekhyun had already taken a step down the street. “Wait,” he shouted spontaneously. But Baekhyun couldn’t – or maybe _didn’t want to_ – hear it. Baekhyun walked towards him with wobbly legs, eyes focusing on him. Sehun panicked.

 

None of them was aware enough of what was coming until Sehun heard the blaring sound of horn and screeches of rubber against the asphalt.

 

 

 

His father’s gaze on him is breaking his heart. It’s a mixture of surprise and a little bit of perplexity. The quiescence is gnawing on them. Maybe his father is finally seeing it the way he does.

 

“I could’ve told him to wait there.” Sehun lets out in a raspy voice. “Could’ve just went to where he was instead of asking him to meet at another place. But I just… did that. Even until now, I don’t know why did I do that. He could’ve been safe. I could’ve taken him somewhere to comfort him first and _then_ take him home. He could still be –“

 

The air is stuck in his respiratory system.

 

It hits him all over _again_ ; how his friend could still be here, how he could be already on his first year of college with him instead of still being a high school senior, how his friend’s parents would still be having their only child with them at home, if only he just simply told his friend to wait at wherever he was instead of asking him to meet at another place.

 

And he cries.

 

Finally, he cries.

 

Out of regret. Out of fear. Of the heavy resentment he holds against himself. Of the stress and the devastation, the helplessness that he feels when he realizes that there’s nothing, not even a thing he could do to fix this, to fix the wrong he had done so carelessly.

  
“It’s my fault. My fault.” He manages to say as sobs rock his whole body. “My fault.” He tries to breathe normally, but his throat is clogged, his nose hurts, and the erratic movement of his chest isn’t making everything easier.

 

Something inside him breaks more when his father gives his shoulder a light squeeze. Could it be that his father is as alarmed as he is at the moment? He hopes he could stop hurting his father like this. “It’s my fault.” He repeats, like a spell, like a hex. “It’s my fault.”

 

His father doesn’t stop him. Maybe his old man agrees with the concept of it. Or maybe the man just wants to let him do it until he gets tired of it by himself and finally see the oddness in it. Or maybe, just maybe, his father couldn’t think of anything to say to him.

 

“It’s my fault.” Sehun says after coughing due to the sobs.

 

“It’s all my fault.”

 

 

 

He couldn’t move.

 

He just fell onto the asphalt, bottom first. The bones behind it hurt immediately. His back hunched forward, due to the sudden consternation that downed upon him. His arms were somehow paralyzed; his hands were resting somewhere on the asphalt, palms pressing against its rough surface, but he felt nothing. For a moment, his ears lost their function. It was as if there was a detonation which had ruined his eardrums. Or maybe it was a detonation. Maybe something had exploded inside him, ruining everything.

 

In front of him, a chaos unfolded. Some cars pulled over. A number of people gathered. A commotion was involuntarily formed. All because of the boy who was sprawled on the street, next to the sidewalk across where he was frozen on. Sehun couldn’t see the boy’s face. But of course he knew who it was. He knew it too well.

 

His ears started to pick up sounds again. Noise immediately registered into his head. Noise. So much noise. Someone shouted something at someone else. Some cars started to move further, leaving the scene. He couldn’t see the boy anymore; the body was drowned between a sea of other bodies.

 

He wanted to see.

 

He didn’t want to.

 

He wanted to see him.

 

He didn’t want to.

 

He had to see Baekhyun.

 

He couldn’t.

 

But he forced his senses to fill his limbs once more. He sucked a breath and pushed himself up. With hurting hands and wobbly legs, he started to walk towards the commotion. He noticed that it wasn’t as crowded as he had thought it to be moments before. Just a few more steps, and he was already standing a meter from the body.

 

Baekhyun was unconscious. Sehun stared, glared at the chest. There was this tiny movement, up and down, indicating that Baekhyun’s lungs were still breathing and his heart was still beating mandatorily, but he had lost consciousness.

 

“My… f-friend,” Sehun managed to say, “he’s my friend.”

 

Someone tried to confirm if he really knew the unconscious boy. Another one told him to help a man lift up Baekhyun’s body; the man was the one who drove the car who had hit Baekhyun. Some random lady volunteered to go with them to the hospital, just in case some unfavorable things happen on the way. He got on the back seat, cradling Baekhyun’s head on his laps.

 

As he watched the paramedics taking Baekhyun into the ER, the absurdness of the night finally got into his head.

 

 _What happened?_ He wondered.

 

_What the fuck just happened?_

 

 

 

“Son?”

 

Sehun coughs up the remnants of his sobs. He turns to his side, to take a look at his father, who now looks upset as well.

 

“It was an accident.” His old man says, slowly, clearly. “Wrong place, wrong time. It was a pure accident.”

 

He had expected those words to come out of his father’s lips, thus he shakes his head immediately. “I could’ve prevented it.” He repeats what he said like a broken robot. “None of that would’ve happened. If only I was more aware. If only I had thought about it better.”

 

His father waits until he doesn’t speak anymore. “Sehun-ah, tell me again what happened that night? In summary.”

 

Rage suddenly brews inside him. He had explained everything, and yet his father still asks? “He was hit by a car.”

 

 _He_ was hit by a car.

 

Such a simple sentence to describe the moment his life had stopped.

 

“So there was a car, wasn’t there?”

 

He nods, still perplexed.

 

“The car just happened to come in such speed and collided with… the body, right?”

 

_Yes. Yes. Stop asking. Please._

 

“Then if you said it wouldn’t have happened if only you didn’t ask Baekhyun to be there,” his father pauses for a second, “then I can also say that it wouldn’t have happened if only the car didn’t pass that street or was at least slower, right? That driver would’ve seen Baekhyun earlier, and it would’ve given him the time to stop, right? Or maybe he would’ve never been there at all. Then no one would’ve gotten hurt. I can say those things too, right?”

 

Sehun tilts his head. It feels heavy. “So you’re blaming the driver?”

 

His father shrugs, gaze meaningful. “I can also say that Baekhyun could’ve waited for you at the side walk as you asked him to.”

 

His breath hitches. The rage immediately bursts into a storm inside him. _How dare you say that_. _How could you say that?_

 

“No, son.” His father shakes his head with a gentle smile. “I’m not blaming anybody. I’m saying that the accident didn’t happen because of one thing only. Let’s see it as a math equation. You got the number five not only because you subtracted seven with two. You got it because there was number ten, then it was multiplied with two, then you subtracted the result with five, then you divided the next result with three. Then you got five, the final outcome. It resulted from many numbers. That was how the accident happened. It resulted from so many aspects, so many variables that had led to one outcome. You can _not_ point out one aspect and claim it to be the exact cause. It doesn’t work that way, Sehun-ah. Blaming one person won’t give you the reason why the thing in question happened.”

 

 

 

“How could this happen?”

 

Sehun’s gaze stayed on the white tiles beneath his feet. His back bone ached. That was the only thing he felt. The ache. Maybe it wasn’t in his bones. Maybe it was somewhere else, like in his chest, or in his head, or even inside his stomach.

 

Or maybe the ache couldn’t find any spot to latch on because the void inside him was getting too big, consuming everything of him.

 

“Hun-ah…” soft, trembling voice called for him once more. “Sehun-ah…”

 

He wanted to run away.

 

But his mind was not in sync with his limbs that night.

 

“Am I dreaming?”

 

Then he finally felt something else; something heavy that shattered into pieces.

 

“Sehun-ah… are we dreaming?”

 

 _I hope we are_. He whispered inside. _I fucking hope we are_.

 

“How…” the voice trailed off, fading into a whisper. A broken, painful whisper.

 

“… how do we wake up?”

 

He wanted to cry. To scream. To channel all this sadness and rage out. But even his tears and voice betrayed him; they wouldn’t come out. Nothing of him was able to help him. Not even himself wanted to help him.

 

 _I don’t know_.

 

_I don’t know._

_I don’t know_.

 

_I’m sorry. I don’t know._

_I’m so sorry_.

 

 

 

“Then how?” he manages to ask.

 

His father still stares at him with gentle gaze.

 

“How do I find the answer?” Sehun balls his hands into fists. “How do I find the reason?”

 

He needs to know; he’s _desperate_ to know the reason. To why it happened. Why it _has_ to happen. It can’t be because it _just happened_. No one deserves to be cruelly taken from life in a split of second without them even expecting it just because _it just happens._ No one deserves to be in pain this much because _it just happens._ There must be a reason. No matter how cruel and absurd it might be, there must be a reason. And Sehun needs to find it, to know it, to understand it, to deal with it.

 

Much to his dismay, his father shakes his head slowly. “You don’t.” the warm voice breaks the truth to him. “You don’t find the answer. Because there is none.”

 

_There is none._

_There is none?_

_Are you kidding me?_

“Those things… that kind of things, you just can’t explain them, Sehun. They’re not science. Not equations with exact formulas. You can’t say that your friend died because of something, because he did something or someone wanted him to. It was called an _accident._ No one expected it, and nothing about it was intended. There was no apparent or deliberate cause. And when there is no explainable cause, of course there’ll be no reason. And if you keep looking for the reason, all you’d find is the same street, the same place, the same time, even the same day. You won’t be able to move forward, because you’re stuck at wondering why, making it impossible for you to see the road before your eyes.”

 

 _Oh_.

 

So that was why.

 

He’s been stuck in that day for two years because of that.

 

Because he kept looking for something that was never there to begin with.

 

He kept asking the wrong question, one that was never meant to be a question after all; of course there’d be no answer.

 

“I’m so sorry, Sehun-ah.” His father murmurs. “I’m sorry that life just had to be like this. I’m sorry you can’t find the answer to everything. And I’m sorry you lost your friend. I really am, son.”

 

_Why are you apologizing to me?_

_Am I a victim?_

_Am I not the culprit?_

 

“So…” he whispers, “it wasn’t my fault?”

 

_It really wasn’t?_

 

His father lets out a soft chuckle, then he shakes his head for the nth time. “It was not.” His old man says. “It was not your fault. It was no one’s fault.”

 

_It really wasn’t._

 

“Then, what… then what,” he looks up at his father, “what do I do now?”

 

_What should I do?_

_If I stop looking for the reason, then what should I do after?_

 

“You let go.”

 

He frowns.

 

“You let go, Sehun-ah.” His father pats his shoulder. “You accept it, you deal with it, then you let go.”

 

Sehun thinks his father is being ridiculous. After all this time, that is the only thing he gets? Being told to let go? “H-how?”

 

“You telling me these things, it’s already your way of accepting it. You acknowledged the problem and tried to understand it. Maybe it was not perfect, nor was it satisfying, but you did it. You’re accepting it.”

 

“Then I deal with it?”

 

His father nods. “Then you deal with it. By understanding the way the problem is solved. You don’t have to do it right away, but you’ve got to get there someday.”

 

“And then…” he almost choked on his own, “then I… let go?”

 

A smile spreads on his father’s lips.

 

“Then you let go.”

 

The concept of it sounds foreign to him. Letting go? He hadn’t thought of it. He always considered letting go as forgetting everything, pretending nothing ever happened, yet also thinking about it when the night comes, when he was in the darkest corners of his own space. He was scared by the thought of it. He was afraid that if he let go, he’d lose a part of himself too.

 

He was afraid to become crippled.

 

But maybe that part of him wasn’t a mere wounded limb, which would be amputated once the decaying process becomes dangerous to his health.

 

Maybe that part was more like a shirt that became his favorite. One that he wore so much until it got worn out. He could give it to his mother; she’d make a cleaning cloth out of it. He could keep in his drawer and use it at home, without decreasing the chance of other shirts being worn by him. The shirt was once beautiful, so beautiful that he used it for so many times, and even when it becomes worn out, washed out, when it loses its original color, he’d still love it, still cherish it. And he doesn’t even have to throw it out.

 

Maybe letting go doesn’t exactly mean throwing away something. Maybe it actually means being able to embrace the thing without letting it hurt him.

 

Maybe what he has to let go isn’t Baekhyun; it’s the bad memories that were associated with his whole history with Baekhyun. He could keep the happy ones. He could still keep fragments of Baekhyun in him without having to hurt himself.

 

Baekhyun, after all, was a huge part of his happiness.

 

His happiness.

 

Aside of Baekhyun, there was also this one person, who also took a huge part in being his happiness.

 

And he owes that person an apology and a confession.

 

The second, better, more proper one.

 

And he can start by telling the universe about what he feels for that person.

 

“Can I tell you something else?” he gains his father’s attention again.

 

His father shifts on the bench to face him properly. “What is it?”

 

He ponders for a moment. This is not a simple matter. Maybe it should’ve been simple, but the society never allowed it to be. Will his father be different from the rest? He doesn’t need him to be different; he just wishes he’d be better.

 

_‘Would you actually tell the… universe, about your feelings?’_

 

His universe starts with his father.

 

_‘And if you get hurt while at it, would that person worth it all?’_

 

And maybe, even if he gets hurt in the end, the person would worth it all.

 

How come he never saw that?

 

“I like my friend.” He says in one breath.

 

His father stares at him, confused.

 

“Not as in I like him as a person. I like him… as in I’d love him properly one day.”

 

Then it’s silent. The weight of it sinks down onto him. “ _Him_.” His father repeats.

 

He nods hesitatingly at first, but then he nods again, more determined this time.

 

“Baekhyun?” his father whispers almost inaudibly.

 

Holding back a smile, Sehun shakes his head. “My other friend.” He says carefully. “I lied to you. We haven’t really talked ever since… that day. I… I’ve hurt him all along. But I want to make it up to him. I’m going to make it up to him. I’ll tell him once again that I like him. Can I… can I do that?”

 

His father doesn’t say a thing. He can’t pinpoint the emotion on his father’s face. Suddenly the fear starts to consume him.

 

“I’m sorry.” Sehun says, head hanging down dejectedly. “If this is wrong for you, then I’m sorry. But I have to do it. I have to –“

 

He halts his words when he feels a pat on his shoulder. He looks up, finding his father’s seemingly amused face.

 

“Son,” his father calls, “what’s so wrong with liking someone?”

 

Sehun’s eyes widen for a moment before they relax again, the dejectedness swirling back into his mind again. “You don’t need to act nice about it.” He murmurs. “I know how the world works.”

 

 _After all, it was why that stupid kid ran away from Chanyeol that day_.

 

“Hey, look here.” His father waits until he does so. “Do you really like him that much?”

 

Not really understanding what his father might be meaning about, he nods hesitatingly.

 

“As in you’re going to love him one day?” his father continues.

 

He nods again.

 

His father laughs. Sehun had thought it would be out of disbelief or awkwardness. But the laughter is so light and warm, seemingly out of amusement. “How so? How could you like him that much?”

 

And instead of cowering away, Sehun feels rather annoyed – or even, shy. “He’s… kind. Very kind. Very understanding and accepting; I don’t know how he does that. Sometimes he could be so selfless. He’s also very smart. He’s got this smile, I don’t know how to describe it, it’s just so… warming? And his eyes,”

 

A memory of that person plays in his mind.

 

“his eyes are the prettiest.”

 

When he looks at his father again, he finds him scrunching up his face in pure amusement and mischievousness. As if he was tickled by his son’s words.

 

Sehun grumbles. “I regret telling you.”

 

“No, no, sorry, okay, it’s just –“ his father doubles in laughter. “I can’t wait until your mother hears about this. She’s going to be –“

 

“No please don’t tell her.”

 

The smile fades a little on his father’s face. “Why?”

 

“I…” Sehun looks over his laps, “I don’t know how she’d react.”

 

He hears his father snorting. “I think she’d be very ecstatic to hear that she had won the bet.”

 

Sehun takes a look on his father’s face again. He stays like that for a long while until he can finally speak again. “The _what_?”

 

Smiling sheepishly, his father shrugs. “It started after you graduated from middle school. I forgot how we got to that point but one night she was like, ‘honey, our son likes his best friend’ and I said, ‘are you saying our son likes boys?’ and she sighed so heavily and said after, ‘not just some boys, he likes his best friend!’ and that was when it downed to me that instead of worrying about how you like boys, she was worried because you liked your best friend, she said it must be quite tricky for you. But I told her that you were too busy with games and dancing, you couldn’t be liking anyone. And she said that if I was right, then she’d let me buy that old motorcycle from your Uncle.”

 

He’s surprised. A little bit overwhelmed. Even his parents had seen it since long ago; all of his feelings for that person. “And if she was right…?”

 

His father chuckles. “If she was right, I have to accept the situation with an open heart.”

 

Sehun rests his body against the bench, somehow feeling like something had been sucked out of him. “Is that why you’re being so cool about it?”

 

“Hm, not really.” His father clicks his tongue. “I figured it out days after that conversation happened. It wasn’t that I had a problem with it since the beginning, but after days, I found that I don’t want to meddle with my children’s romance life, nor do I want to tell them who to love. As long as they take responsibilities for their feelings and cherish the person they claim to love, I am more than okay with that. I just want my children to be responsible. That’s all.” The man then glances at him. “Were my words too heavy for you?”

 

“No. I get them.”

 

“The point is,” his father smiles, “if you really like him that much, then what’s holding you back from telling him that?”

 

It really feels like a déjà vu. Like he had been through this conversation with someone else. Or maybe he did, hours before. “I did. I told him.” He says in a low voice. “It didn’t go well.”

 

His father turns serious eventually. “Did he reject you?” the man asks, sounding so careful. “Is that why both of you haven’t talked for so long?”

 

_Oh, dear Heavens, if only I could say._

 

“No.” he shakes his head. “It’s… worse.”

 

He doesn’t get to see the look on his father as he drops his gaze onto the stone tiles beneath their feet. Its dark grey color looks weird under the yellow porch light. “Is there anything you can do to fix it?”

 

To those words, Sehun jolts his head up.

 

 _There is something_.

 

“I can tell him the second time.”

 

_I can be brave enough to do it._

 

“I will tell him again. Properly.”

 

_I will be brave enough to do it._

 

His father laughs. “Then do it.” He encourages. “Tell him your feelings haven’t changed.”

 

‘ _Tell him_.’

 

In the end, it’s about communication. About telling the person that matters the thing that matters.

 

“I like him.” Sehun repeats, mostly to himself.

 

“I like _Han._ ”

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 


	4. Saturday (Part One)

 

There were three of them. Him, Baekhyun, and Han.

 

Those two boys, they were his sunny days and cool nights. Even in the coldest weather. They were his strength, his pillars, his laughter, even his tears. He didn’t need a whole lifetime with them to be so attached with their existence.

 

Sehun cherished Baekhyun so much.

 

While Han?

 

Sehun liked him.

 

He had liked Han for the longest time. He couldn’t remember since when, exactly. But he could say that it was since their first days together. The small crush had started the moment Han laughed cheerily when Baekhyun pointed out how similar they looked, back in middle school, when everything seemed like a wonder and millions of questions started to pop up in their little heads. At first, Sehun was skeptical about the small crush he had invested inside. Maybe it was just because Han was so adorable. Boyish and adorable. Very cool and likeable. Very kind and warm. Sehun had thought his feeling wasn’t special; everyone must’ve been crushing on Han as well.

 

But the seeds that were planted on the soil of his heart were watered and nourished with their friendship, with Han’s laughter, Han’s smiles, Han’s random midnight calls, Han’s genuineness in trusting him with his worries; basically Han’s presence. There was Baekhyun, of course, but Han was the one who got a room inside his heart without even trying. The small crush gradually developed into fondness and more. One winter night, at the end of middle school, he finally dealt with it;

 

he liked Han.

 

He liked Han, so, so much.

 

But he couldn’t tell Han just that. Even though he had started to like Han even before Han became his best friend, it was friendship that had bound them together. It could ruin it. What he understood was that there was no actual place for romance in a friendship; merging it would risk a lot. That, and the society was never better than before. He couldn’t just shout his feelings for Han out when everyone didn’t approve man to love man and woman to love woman. He wasn’t sure if Han would be up for the challenge, should he feel the same. He wasn’t even sure that he himself was ready for the challenge.

 

But feelings that grew were like water filling a cup; once it gets to the brim, it spills. His feelings were like water, and his heart was the cup. He couldn’t contain it anymore.

 

Until one day, it all seemed somehow possible.

 

And the day it seemed so promising was also the day it all crumbled down into pieces on the ground.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s a few minutes past midnight. It’s already Saturday. The fourth day of August.

 

This day, exactly two years ago, was the worst day of his life.

 

The day the time started to slow down and eventually stopped for him.

 

Everything was put into a halt ever since that day. Somehow, his life wasn’t even his anymore. And to make it even more convincing, he casted away all the evidence that showed the joyful life he had lived before. He did not need to live through his days with constant reminder that his happiness was stolen from him and crushed right before his eyes.

 

But in contrary to his determination in forgetting everything, he had kept some of the pieces from the life he lived before this dull one.

 

He kept them in a box. A shoe box, to be exact. The box of his baby blue Converse; a birthday gift from his best people when they were in the last year of middle school.

 

And now, he’s sitting on the floor of his bedroom, back resting against the edge of his bed, the box resting on his laps. He lifts the lid up and holds his breath as the pair of baby blue shoes greets his sight. Something white, like a piece of paper, is stuck against the paper wall inside the box.

 

He lifts up his hand, reaching into the box. The tip of his index finger traces along the slightly rough fabric that wraps the upper part of the soles. He remembers them boasting about how hard it was to find a pair in that exact baby blue color. His finger than taps on the soft shoelaces, loosely tangled together. Maybe his mother knew he would never wear this pair again when he had cleaned it and put in in the box for him.

 

Then he detaches the piece of paper from the box. He flips it around, finding vivid colors printed on its surface. It’s not just a paper; it’s a polaroid.

 

A picture of the three of them, together. On the couch in his living room.

 

Smiling. Laughing. Shoulders pressed together. He and Han were holding game consoles in their hands, while Baekhyun was securing a bowl of tortilla chips in his arms. It must’ve been Serin who took the picture.

 

They were happy.

 

They were so happy.

 

He’s forgotten how to be that happy.

 

How was he able to smile that wide?

 

It feels like those smiles had happened centuries ago. He had forgotten how bright they were, how they had brought such joy in his life. His definition of happiness was so simple back then; ‘ _if they’re happy, then I’m happy_.’

 

Now Baekhyun is not around anymore, and he hasn’t seen Han’s bright smile for two years.

 

He, himself, hasn’t been happy.

 

But today, he finally deals with it. He acknowledges that he hasn’t been happy, and is finally okay with it. For two years, he had forced himself to be alright, without giving his own mind a break to mourn. To just be _not_ okay. To shatter into pieces and stay that way for a while until the said pieces are ready to be glued back together again. Today, he lets himself break.

 

And so, he cries.

 

It starts with the nauseating feeling that swirls from his chest up to his head. They trigger his eyes to suddenly get wet, to feel like they’re burning up. His eyebrows involuntarily knit into a frown. His lips then press against each other in such force. Then come the sobs; his body lurches forward before it gets back up again.

 

He cries it out. Everything. His regrets. His resentment. His guilt. His confusion. His longing.

 

“I’m sorry.” He manages to choke out in between his sobs. The polaroid trembles in his hand. “I’m sorry.”

 

He wants to smile again.

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

He wants to be happy again.

 

“I’m so sorry.”

 

He wants to be happy without feeling guilty for being so.

 

“I’m sorry.” He wipes his tears away harshly; they fall down right again. “I’m so sorry.”

 

He wants to love again. To love the people he loves, to love himself.

 

He wants to feel alive again.

 

“I miss you.” he whispers, blurry sight still on the picture. “Both of you.”

 

He misses himself.

 

He wants to be himself again.

 

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

 

Baekhyun’s smile catches his attention again. The smile he’d never be able to see anymore. The last thing he saw on Baekhyun was a look of devastation. Would’ve been nicer if Baekhyun had left with a smile.

 

With a smile or with tears, Baekhyun left. Baekhyun is gone. Has been gone for exactly two years. What happened that night suddenly becomes vague to him. That, or it doesn’t matter anymore, because whatever happened in that moment, whatever had led to that event, whoever was there to blame, Baekhyun is still gone.

 

And he finally understands, why he had to let it go.

 

Because there’s nothing he could do about it. There is no advantage and disadvantage coming out from this. No causalities. No right or wrong. Death, if not the end, is a definite part of everybody’s life cycle. Everybody would go through that stage. Maybe Baekhyun’s turn just arrived too fast. But still, it was bound to happen.

 

When something inevitable happens, all we can do is let it go. Because no one wanted it to happen, as much as no one is responsible for it.

 

So, tonight, Sehun lets go.

 

He lets Baekhyun go.

 

His sadness stays, but the regrets and resentment that had accompanied it are now walking away with a smile. They’re now free to leave. He’s not holding them back anymore.

 

His eyes then shift on the person next to him in the picture. Han. He was also smiling, ever so brightly, ever so sweetly. He owes Han millions of apologies. He’s responsible to make Han smile again. He has to put that smile back on Han’s face.

 

And he’ll do it today.

 

If he meets Han today, he’ll do what it takes to make Han smile again.

 

And he’ll tell Han about his feelings.

 

It’ll be different this time.

 

=

 

“Is everything ready?”

 

Zipping his backpack properly, Sehun looks up and finds his sister standing under the doorway of his bedroom. “I think so.”

 

“Is that all you’re bringing with you?” Serin asks with dramatized horror on her face. “Does everything even fit in there?”

 

“It’s just for one night, noona. There’s a chance I won’t even have to stay for the night.” Sehun giggles. “I have all the things I need in here.”

 

Serin walks into the room, eyeing his navy blue backpack doubtfully. “You sure?”

 

He smiles. “Would you want me to bring some pillows and blanket?”

 

“Well, if you can!”

 

He laughs wholeheartedly, throwing his head back, feeling mirth and amusement exploding inside him for a short yet meaningful moment. He notices his sister pouting, although he could also see the smile starting to bloom on the corners of her lips. “Noona,” he calls, remnants of laughter accompanying his voice, “have I ever told you that you’re really pretty?”

 

Serin frowns at him. “Quit being creepy.”

 

“I mean it.”

 

“You don’t have to tell me that. I already know I’m gorgeous.”

 

Sehun snorts really hard, earning a pinch on the arm from his sister. For a moment, he rests his gaze on his sister’s face, but his thoughts are floating towards elsewhere. He’s aware of the momentary light, joyful feeling he had felt earlier. Somehow, it’s so easy to laugh today.

 

“Noona,” he calls again, voice soft and hesitant, “do you think I deserve it?”

 

Serin’s eyes widen at him in confusion and curiosity. “Deserve what?”

 

“To be happy.”

 

Serin blinks up at him, noticeably taken aback by his question. For a moment, he regrets ever asking that. He feels foolish. Maybe he shouldn’t have ruined such a fine morning by asking her that. Maybe he should apologize.

 

To his surprise, Serin takes a hold of his hand and tugs on it. “Follow me.” she says gently. He takes a few steps behind her, confused, until he realizes that she’s aiming for the tall mirror at the corner of his room next to the doors of his walk-in closet.

 

She makes him stand right in front of the mirror, while she stays next to him. “Sehun-ah,” she calls softly, “don’t you know?”

 

He stays still. His silence is enough as a reply.

 

“Everyone deserves to be happy.” she says. “Everyone. Including you.” she points at his reflection in the mirror. “We all deserve to be happy. Maybe not in the same way, but we deserve to have the same outcome. As long as we don’t hurt others on our way to reach happiness. What makes you question it for yourself?”

 

Sehun shrugs, in all honesty. “I don’t know.” he says. “It just feels wrong.”

 

“To be happy?” Serin frowns. “It feels wrong to be happy?”

 

“It feels wrong.” he repeats. “It’s like I shouldn’t be happy.”

 

Tilting her head, Serin lets out a sigh. “And why is that?”

 

It’s suffocating, the heaviness in his chest. It’s been suffocating him for two years. But somehow, today, he’s willing to let them go. To set his chest free. Somehow he has the strength to go through the painful process of letting the heaviness out of his system. “I was happy.” he turns to her. “I had everything. I was happy. I had Mom and Dad. I had you. I had Han. I had Baekhyun. I was happy because I had it all. Because all of you are my happiness. When one went missing, when I became incomplete, shouldn’t I be _not_ happy? How can I be happy when one of the reasons of my happiness isn’t around anymore? If I’m happy when the one who made me happy has gone, won’t it be selfish of me?”

 

Serin takes a step back from him, eyes still on his. Maybe she doesn’t know what to answer to that. Maybe she has an answer, but she realizes it won’t satisfy her brother.

 

“Sehun-ah, who do you think you’re being selfish to? If you’re happy, I mean.”

 

He casts his gaze down over his bare feet. “Baekhyun.”

 

“So Baekhyun would be upset if you’re happy without him?”

 

In a second, he lifts up his head. “That’s not it.” _He’s not that kind of person. He’s not like that._

 

“But you said you’d be selfish to him if you’re happy without him.” she offers him a lopsided smile. “Isn’t it considered as selfish when the thing you do for your sake harms others? Do you think your happiness would harm him?”

 

He shakes his head in disagreement.

 

“Then I don’t think it’s selfish of you to be happy even when he’s not here with you anymore.” Serin smiles fully at him. “You deserve to be happy. Your happiness, now and in the future, doesn’t need to have anything to do with Baekhyun. Of course you could make him a part of you forever. Maybe in how you’d describe a color. The taste of a food. The weather. A funny joke. You could say, ‘Baekhyun used to like this’, ‘Baekhyun used to hate that’, ‘Baekhyun told me once about this’, it could go on and on. But he doesn’t have to be a determinant of your level of happiness. If one day you become genuinely happy without him, don’t feel guilty about it; be thankful instead. Be thankful that you are happy. As much as everyone deserves to be happy, not everyone really feels happy. The fact that you can be happy is already something to be thankful of. If you’re happy, then you are happy. That’s just it. With or without him. He was a part of your life, not your whole. What about us? We are still here. We want to stay as your happiness too.”

 

His sister’s eyes are glazy. He only notices it now.

 

“Be happy, Sehun-ah.” Serin gives his hand a light squeeze before releasing it. “Be happy for yourself. Not for anyone else. Not even for us. Be happy for yourself.”

 

Serin’s eyes are still on him, expectant. So he nods. Slowly, slightly. Hesitant, but also determined. It seems to be enough for his sister. Wordlessly, his sister envelopes him in a hug, and he immediately bend his neck forward to rest his forehead on her shoulder. Serin is noticeably smaller than him, but her embrace is so warm, enough to shield his entire figure.

 

A moment passes by, and she releases him from her arms. “Go downstairs as soon as you can!” she puts back her cheerful voice. “Mom’s making your favorite ham sandwich.”

 

After another nod, his sister leaves him be. Once the door closes, he turns to the mirror again, looking at his own reflection one more time. He only had five hours of sleep earlier, thus he still feels quite sleepy. But somehow, he looks okay. He looks fine. His face looks slightly brighter today. His shoulder isn’t as hunched as usual. His lips don’t feel stiff like he always felt. Even breathing is lighter and easier today.

 

He smiles.

 

It finally looks genuine.

 

He’s getting better.

 

He promises to himself that he’s going to get better.

  
  


 

After assuring the entire house that he’d be fine and would immediately call them if something ever happens later, he is allowed to step out of the door. But of course his mother stops him mid-way and pulls him into a tight hug. Maybe she had heard about everything that happened last night from his father. Her embrace is especially warm today.

 

“Mom?” he says, voice muffled against her sweater. “I love you.”

 

The hug tightens. “I love you more, my dear.”

 

He pulls away from his mother, turning to his father who is standing on the porch. “Thanks, Dad.” he smiles sheepishly.

 

His father chuckles. “Anytime, kid.”

 

When it comes to his sister, he gives her a little wave. Serin waves back excitedly.

 

He spins around, facing the gate, and stops. He takes a look over his shoes. The baby blue shoes he finally wears again after two years. They still fit his feet perfectly. _You are a part of me_. He smiles. _Both of you are always a part of me._

 

He lifts his head up, eyes on the gate.

 

He feels strangely spirited today.

 

=

 

“This a scam. How could they lure us into this?! Intensive 12 hours class?! On a _Saturday_?!”

 

Sehun frowns at his distressed friend. “This was included in the list of mandatory programs which you have signed - _which_ you would’ve read beforehand.”

 

Jongin pouts. “A fucking scam.”

 

On the contrary with him, Kyungsoo is laughing at Jongin’s antics instead. “Adorable.” his new friend says for the nth time.

 

Sehun wonders if Kyungsoo has some kind of problem with his eyes.

 

“This is only the first 4 hour session.” jongin cradles his head with his both hands, tugging on his hairs. “We only got one fucking hour to eat and wash up. What kind of school is this?!”

 

“It’s just for today, Jong. Relax.” Kyungsoo says with a soft smile, patting Jongin at the shoulder.

 

Eyeing the both of his friends, Sehun’s face scrunches. _‘Jong’?!?!_

 

“Wrong. They’re going to do this again for the finals. They’re going to torture us again in six months. Oh God. This is like the base prompt to a dystopian sci-fi manga.”

 

“So you _did_ read about this program before.” Sehun notes with a smirk.

 

Jongin throws light punches all over his shoulder bitterly.

 

 

“He must be really tired.”

 

Sehun looks at Kyungsoo, whose face is filled with worry and fondness, before glancing at Jongin who’s knocked off on the bench under a gigantic tree in the middle of the school’s park. He snorts in amusement. “He’s just a sleepy head. He falls asleep easily whenever it fits.”

 

The worry seem to wear off Kyungsoo’s face a little bit. The lips that were pressed into a line are now smiling slightly. “He’s cute.”

 

“Everything he does is cute to you.” Sehun rolls his eyes.

 

“Because he is cute.” Kyungsoo laughs, more to himself.

 

Sehun smirks, his entire figure is now facing Kyungsoo wholly. “You know, if someone told me I’d hear Do Kyungsoo saying that Kim Jongin is cute a month ago, I would’ve punched that person because that would’ve sounded so strange. Even now I still feel weird after hearing it with my own ears. Like, you are _the_ Do Kyungsoo.”

 

Kyungsoo laughs, trying so hard to mask his shyness. “What is it about me?”

 

“I think the kids fear you the most. You’re always on top of the list, you’re the teachers’ favorite, you’re also this school’s biggest hope for academic competitions. And yet here you are, with this… lump.” Sehun pokes at Jongin’s thigh, making Jongin stir in his sleep. “He’s like, the total opposite of you. His text books barely have creases because he rarely use them. His notebooks are almost as bare as the desert. He prefers eating gummy bears in class than listening to the lecture - and he has never been caught eating too. It’s still a mystery to me how he could pass his quizzes and exams with good grades despite all of those. What is it that you like about him?”

 

“Huh?” Kyungsoo blinks at him, going silent for a moment. “How do you know…?”

 

Sehun chuckles. “It’s just so obvious. At least to me. Maybe not to this kid, though, he’s quite dense sometimes.”

 

Smiling sheepishly, Kyungsoo turns to look at Jongin. “You know what? Actually, it was because of the gummy bear.”

 

“Uh, what?”

 

“I take modern art class for extra curricular studies. That’s the only class I and Jongin have together. And ever since the start of the class, I’d always catch him sneaking his hand into the pouch and just pop a gummy bear in and chew on it discreetly. As you said, the teacher never caught him somehow. One day, like, two months ago, he sat on the desk next to where I sat, and he caught me staring at his gummy bear pouch, and guess what? He gave me three pieces of gummy bears and whispered to me, ‘please don’t tell on me’ with this pleading face. So much drama for a packet of gummy bears.” Kyungsoo giggles. “That was probably the moment I was… intrigued by him.”

 

 _So it wasn’t because of the dance routine_. Sehun shakes his head in disbelief and amusement. “He’s been crushing on you ever since last year.”

 

A faint pink blush spreads on Kyungsoo’s cheeks. “It’s been that long?”

 

“Yeah.” Sehun chuckles to himself. _It really has been that long, huh_.

 

They settle for another silence; a comfortable one. They busy themselves with their own thoughts as their gazes wander over the skies above them. It’s starting to have this faint hues of yellow and orange; Sehun’s phone shows huge ‘05.27 PM’ on the screen. In ten minutes, they would have to take their turns to shower at the bathroom of the school’s gym building. The third session would start at seven in the evening after dinner. They still have plenty of time to leisure around before they need to drown themselves into books again.

 

Out of the blue, there’s this urge to open his mouth and say the words he just thought of. “Jongin is kind. And loyal. And understanding.” He glances at Kyungsoo, and after being assured that he has Kyungsoo’s attention, he turns to look over the skies again. “He’s also humorous. Easy to please too. Basically a goofball.”

 

He hears Kyungsoo chuckle quietly. “I know.” he murmurs, mirth sounding vivid in his voice.

 

“He’s kind. Very kind.” Sehun smiles to himself. “He’s been such a good friend to me. But I haven’t been good to him. I wish I was good to him as well. He deserves it.”

 

Sehun wishes he had met Jongin two years earlier. Or even before that. They could’ve, would’ve been the best of friends.

 

Kyungsoo stays silent for a moment, probably thinking of what to say in reply, before he finally speaks. “He’s really fond of you. He was always worried whenever you skip break time. Yesterday he was so down, he said something was wrong with you and he was upset because he wanted to help but he didn’t know how to. He wanted to ask you but he also didn’t want to bother you. So yeah, he kept beating himself up for the rest of the day.”

 

Something sinks inside him. Even Jongin has been having a hard time because of him.

 

“I guess he was always worried about you. And from that alone, I could see how much of a good person he is. A good friend makes up for a huge percent of a good person.”

 

“He is.” Sehun turns at Kyungsoo. “A good person.”

 

Kyungsoo replies with a smile. A warm, seemingly proud one.

 

“I promise I’d be better to him.” he continues with a faint voice; like he’s saying the words more to himself. “I promise I’ll be a good friend to him too.”

 

He promises to be better to Jongin. He could start from opening up to Jongin about his past. About his worries and heavy thoughts. About why he wishes the day to be sunny when he isn’t even fond of the brightness. About why he’d rather busy himself with doing homeworks than just sit and do nothing. About why he hasn’t been interested in making another friend aside of Jongin until Kyungsoo came along. He’s got a lot of things to tell Jongin.

 

Unexpected to him, Kyungsoo laughs lightly.

 

“If he’s already so fond of you like this,” Kyungsoo glances at Jongin, “doesn’t that mean you’re already good enough as a friend to him?”

 

Somehow, the words weigh down onto him heavier than they should’ve been. Could it be true? Has he been a good friend to Jongin? Has he been good to all the people around him, who are still around him? If they are so kind to him even after everything he had done, maybe it means that he was at least good enough to them.

 

Maybe he doesn’t have to be so hard on himself all the time.

 

And maybe, just maybe, he needs to start to be good to himself too.

 

=

 

The third session finally ends at a little bit past eleven. Almost all of the students immediately set up their futons on the floor of the gym hall, the edges of the beddings touching against each other. Some of the students are already on their way out of the hall, going for the front gate to go home since their houses aren’t that far. Sehun stands awkwardly on his own futon, watching as Jongin shares a packet of bear shaped biscuits to their classmates; Kim Junmyeon and Kris Wu, the odd duo who are also core members of the student council.

 

“Is something wrong?” he finds Kyungsoo already standing by his right side.

 

Sehun doesn’t answer at first, for he’s not sure either if something is wrong or not. But after a moment of thinking, he finally faces Kyungsoo properly. “I think I’m going home.”

 

Kyungsoo looks quite surprised. “But it’s already so late. You house is a train ride away, right?”

 

“Yep.” he nods. “I can take the midnight train. I still have, like, thirty minutes until the train takes off.”

 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Sehun.” Kyungsoo counters, still as calm and collected as ever. “If you really want to go home, why don’t you ask someone from home to pick you up?”

 

Sehun goes quiet at the thought of making Serin or his father drive across the district at such hour. “It’s okay. The train is safe anyway. I’ll just ask them to wait for me at the station.”

 

Kyungsoo doesn’t say anything to his proposal. Sehun wonders why is Kyungsoo thinking so hard for his matter. “I don’t feel good about this.” he finally says. “But I believe you know what you’re doing.”

 

“Don’t worry too much.” Sehun smirks. “Jongin might get jealous.”

 

“I’m already jealous.” suddenly he finds Jongin standing in front of them, face sour, complete with his trademark pout. “What is Kyungsoo worrying about?”

 

“He’s going to go home by the midnight train.” Kyungsoo ends his sentence with a heavy sigh.

 

To that, Jongin’s eyes go wide spontaneously. “Say _what_? Are you insane?”

 

Sehun laughs, already starting to shove his things into his backpack. “You can sleep on my futon.”

 

“I _don’t_ care. Don’t go home!”

 

“I’ll be fine, Jongin.”

 

“But what if something bad happens to you? What if some creepy old man - or even old lady - does something weird to you? What if you get mugged? What if you -”

 

“Jongin,” Kyungsoo warns.

 

Jongin’s furious face morphs into a pleading one. “Please stay.”

 

Putting the backpack on his shoulder, Sehun smiles at his friend. “I’ll update you every ten minutes until I arrive home. I’ll also inform Mr. Yoon that I’m leaving.”

 

“Does anyone home know you’re leaving the school?”

 

“I’m about to tell them on my way to the gate. I’ll ask Dad to pick me up at the station.”

 

The frown doesn’t go away from Jongin’s forehead. “This won’t do.” he mumbles as he walks over the futons. “I’m going to drop you off at the station.”

 

“Uh, are you insane?”

 

“Yes! Because of you! Now wait here, let me get my wallet and phone –“

 

“Hey,” Sehun gently grabs his friend by the shoulder, “don’t be silly, you shouldn’t go out of the school. Do you really want to go back from the station alone?”

 

Jongin is still frowning at him. It takes a little while for Sehun to realize that his friend is actually being serious with his worry. “I don’t feel good about this.” Jongin says quietly at first, then repeats it with a louder voice. “I don’t feel good about this, Sehun.”

 

Something tugs inside Sehun’s chest. The uneasiness in Jongin’s words is making him doubt his own his decision for a second. But then he laughs sheepishly as he throws a very light punch against Jongin’s shoulder. “You can send me away at the gates, though.”

 

A short yet slightly miffed huff escapes Jongin’s nose. For a moment, he doesn’t say a thing, and Sehun holds his gaze on his friend’s eyes until the said friend exhales softly, shoulder relaxing down again. “Okay.”

 

Sehun smiles sheepishly as he makes way for Jongin to walk and lead the way. He then turns at Kyungsoo. “Want to come along?”

 

Seemingly in daze for a second, Kyungsoo nods and starts to move forward.

 

The walk towards the gate of the school’s area is comfortably quiet. Sehun phones his father to let him know he’ll arrive at the Yongsan station in between thirty to forty minutes. His father isn’t so merry with his decision of coming back home alone at such hour, but Sehun insists that he’ll be fine; the neighborhood is still noticeably crowded and he’s already so familiar with the train. After a short argument, his father finally agrees with him and informs him that his sister would be tagging along. Which actually means Serin would be the one driving the car, in his father’s dictionary.

 

Some teachers also walk with them when they spot the group of friends. Their homeroom teacher makes sure that Sehun has already informed everyone needed. Some of his friends, apparently, are taking the same decision of going home by various public transportations. It somehow adds more comfort to his heart.

 

It’s just him and Jongin when he reaches the gates; Kyungsoo had stayed with the teachers to talk about some things. Sehun stops and turns around, finding a still bitter Jongin. “So, see you on Monday?”

 

Jongin waves at him, the dejected look still prominent on his face. “See you on Monday.”

 

Sehun laughs at his friend’s antics. “Stop moping.”

 

Curious eyes wander around his face. “You’ve been so smiley today.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“Yesterday you were, like, so gloomy. But today you’re just… how do I say it, hm? You’re… brighter than the usual, I guess.”

 

The words weigh down onto him. He hasn’t been paying attention to his behavior today. He doesn’t even notice it. “Really?”

 

Jongin nods with a slight smile on his lips. “I mean, you’ve always been cool but I think you’re cooler when you smile a lot.”

 

If it’s days ago, Sehun would’ve snorted and teased Jongin for his choice of words. But tonight, at this moment, all Sehun could think of is how he really has been lacking a lot as a friend for Jongin. He wishes he could be like Jongin; carefree, easy to get joyed, honest and blatant with his words without minding his own ego, caring, and understanding.

 

“Are you free at Monday after school?” he asks instead.

 

Jongin blinks at him, seemingly confused for a second. “Hm,” he then thinks for a moment, “yes. I have no practice on Monday.”

 

“Do you want to check out the new arcade at I’Park? I heard it’s huge. Imagine the amount of games it has.”

 

A frown appears on Jongin’s face before the look morphs into a surprised one. “Are you…” Jongin brings up a hand to his chest, “are you asking me out for a date?”

 

Sehun sighs heavily before he laughs. “Yeah yeah consider it a date.”

 

“But we’re not going to hold hands and feed each other, right? I’m planning to do that with Kyungsoo.”

 

“One more weird word and I’ll cancel it.”

 

“No! Please - okay I’ll go with you I’m _so thrilled_ to go on a date with you, Sehun-ssi.” Jongin bats his eyes at him, feigning the most obnoxious flirty face Sehun has ever seen. “I’ll put on my best outfit!”

 

Sehun snorts. “Just make sure to wear jacket because we’ll also be going to the cinema. We’d freeze inside.”

 

Jongin’s face gets serious again gradually. “Is there something you want to celebrate on Monday? Your plan sounds so fun.”

 

He’s stunned for a short while before he shakes his head, smiling. “I just figured out yesterday that we never really hung out together. The type of hanging out where we do fun stuffs and talk about lots of things, I mean.”

 

The playfulness on Jongin’s face has dissipated since minutes ago. Sehun thinks that maybe Jongin could sense it, the true meaning of his reason. The regret and apology in his words. A smile blooms again on Jongin’s lips; it’s a warm one. “I’d love that.”

 

With another smile and a wave, Sehun leaves the excited and hopeful Jongin.

  
=

 

To his relief, there are quite a lot of people in the carriage he hopped on; he had gotten to the second carriage from the end since he arrived barely a few minutes before the departure time. Unlike his usual train rides, this one consists of bright lights from the ceiling of the carriage and black windows; the lights that the train passes by outside would seem like stars that are moving faster.

 

Sehun hadn’t really noticed a while ago, but now it finally comes down to him that he’s facing a crying child. A devastated, troubled, overwhelmed, crying child. Next to him is another guy, probably his age, playing this rock music loudly in his earphones; he wonders if the guy has hearing problems judging by how loud the sound is. Not so far at the corner is a couple of lovebirds, kissing the hell out of each other as if they’re in a secluded motel room. At the opposing corner is a man, talking angrily at his phone.

 

He sighs heavily. And there he thought his midnight ride would be calm and peaceful. It’s midnight, _for fuck’s sake_.

 

He stands up and walks towards the door that would lead to another carriage. He stops right before it and peeks through the window in the middle of the door. It’s the last carriage, and there’s only one guy in it, already dozing off. With a newfound energy, he opens the doors carefully, closes them properly, and then waltz his way towards the very end of the carriage. Time to close his eyes for a moment until they arrive.

 

It’s when he’s already settled, legs comfortable on the seat, back resting against the wall of the carriage with his backpack cushioning his spine, that he takes a proper look at the sleeping guy and then recognizes who it actually is.

 

 _What is he doing here?_ Sehun’s throat goes dry out of sudden. He stares at the red Converse snuggled under folded laps; a counterpart to his own baby blue pair. Then his eyes shift to the red backpack secured around arms that are wrapped in seemingly thick white hoodie. He then observes the fringe that moves as the head lolls slightly to the sides. Lastly, he holds his gaze on the petite face that is hidden under the said fringe.

 

It’s Luhan.

 

Something starts to spread across his chest. A tingling feeling. Something warm and soft, yet it makes his heart hammer against his ribcage. Something like a reminder, like it’s urging him to remember, to recall, to admit something. Something delicate that washes over him in such force. Something that gives his sight a tinge of yellow, like a series of pictures from an old, worn out film roll.

 

It’s like an epiphany, but instead of a sudden revelation, he’s facing something from his past, something he should’ve faced long ago.

 

He doesn’t know why, or how, but the said feeling makes him straighten his back and then stand up. It makes him walk slowly, cautiously, across the carriage and sit next to Luhan, casting his backpack away on the seat. It makes him bring his legs up to fold them upward and hug them close to his chest, while his head rests on his knees sideways, eyes directed at Luhan’s sleeping face. It makes him drown himself into the silence that protects the both of them from any harm, like reality.

 

Here he is, staring at Luhan in silence again. This time, he’s doing it in such proximity. He could see the lines and contours of Luhan’s face. The tip of his button nose. The slightly rosy tint on the apple of his cheek. The slight jut of his lower lip. The thickness of his eyelashes. The faint frown between his eyebrows. The similarly faint scratch marks that haven’t disappeared from his jaw. Luhan looks rather small like this, curling to himself.

 

Sehun smiles.

 

For the nth time of the day, Sehun smiles.

 

But somehow, this one, this soft and genuinely spontaneous one, matters more than the previous ones.

 

There are only the two of them in the carriage. Luhan is sleeping next to him, and he’s also about to close his eyes to give them some rest, but somehow, this feels much better than any form of company he had ever sought during the past two years.

 

He finds the solace he had thought he’d find in someone’s words in the silence that he’s sharing with the right person.

 

=

 

When he’s afloat in the limbo between consciousness and slumber, he hears strange noises around him. The kind of noise he couldn’t pinpoint what. All he knows that it isn’t stopping.

 

Then he feels the surface beneath his figure move. It’s shaking, being tossed to the side, and his sense of gravity tells him that he’s tumbling down with his surroundings. Something is happening.

 

But he can’t open his eyes. He wants to, but his eyelids don’t even budge.

 

Why can’t he open his eyes?

 

He feels warmth around his left hand. The kind of warmth that emanates from someone. Soft, warm touch engulfs his hand. Somehow, he feels calm for a moment.

 

An alarmingly loud sound explodes around him.

 

Something is happening.

 

=

 

When he opens his eyes again, he almost gasped loudly because of what he finds first.

 

A pair of doe eyes are looking into his own. Calm, yet looking curious at the same time.

 

“Whoa,” then soft, velvety voice greets his ears, “did I really wake you up just by staring?”

 

Sehun, suddenly aware of the proximity between him and the person in front of him, scoots backwards slightly on the seat. “I guess.”

 

Luhan chuckles. The corner of his eyes crinkle. Sehun likes those details. “Awesome. Why are you here?”

 

Words suddenly getting tangled in his head, Sehun blinks back at Luhan instead. “Why are _you_ here?”

A smile, a rather meaningful one, spreads slightly on Luhan’s lips. “I actually came to school to work on a group project, then after we were finished, my group mates dragged me to play around the neighborhood and… let’s just say I lost track on the time.”

 

“… oh.” He murmurs. Something washes over him inside. Something tingling and joyous. Maybe a simple merry. “That was quite detailed.”

 

Luhan doubles over in laughter; Sehun doesn’t know what’s so funny, but he knows that he’s glad he was entertaining enough for Luhan. “Now, why are you here?” Luhan asks again.

 

“Our school has this intensive 12 hours study session as a prep before mid-semester exam. It ended at a little bit past eleven, I think, and I was supposed to stay at school over the night but I really felt like going home.”

 

“Whoa, they really do that?”

 

“There’ll be another one for finals.”

 

Luhan shakes his head in awe. Then the gentle look appears on his face again. “You should’ve stayed back. It’s not safe to go around at this hour.”

 

Sehun raises an eyebrow at him. “You’re not the one to talk.”

 

Instead of replying back, Luhan bites his lips while holding a sheepish smile from breaking out. Sehun notices it, and he laughs. The bubbly feeling inside him helps him laugh. Soon enough, Luhan joins him in a giggling fit.

 

It’s been so easy to laugh today.

 

A moment later, they calm down from their temporary high, and that’s when Sehun notices the blackness outside the train. No lights passing through. Just pure black. “How long was I asleep?” he asks.

 

Luhan shifts his gaze towards the windows, following Sehun’s line of sight. “A couple of minutes, I guess?” he answers with a hint of hesitation in his voice. “It should’ve been a couple of minutes.”

 

“You were already asleep when I walked in here.”

 

“Yeah, was tired from walking around.” Luhan turns his gaze to him again. “Maybe we didn’t sleep for long? I mean, we haven’t arrived yet.”

 

If the ride is approximately twenty minutes, minus the time they spent to get into the train and sit for a while before falling asleep, it means that they couldn’t have slept for more than ten minutes. “Yeah.” Sehun nods.

 

It means that there are only a few of minutes left.

 

Would it be enough for him?

 

It should be.

 

He has to let out the words as soon as possible.

 

Besides, chances are he could have the whole day to hide in his bedroom after baring himself tonight.

 

He doesn’t know where to start from. How to start. He stays silent for a while, as he feels Luhan’s presence next to him, probably thinking of what to say to break the silence, or even waiting for him to speak first.

 

He looks over his laps, at his intertwined fingers. He detaches his hands from each other and stares at his palms.

 

His fingers are shaking.

 

“That day…” he finally begins, “that day, before going home, _he_ told me to confess.”

 

From his peripheral vision, he could see Luhan’s head slowly turning towards him.

 

“He knew. He knew it all along. He always knew about my feelings. He confirmed it a week before that. He looked… so happy, because his guess was right. And he encouraged me to confess. The peak was that day. After school. At the gates, before we went home. He made me promise that I’d confess.”

 

 

 

“What if it goes bad?”

 

Baekhyun frowned at him. “Why do you think it’ll go bad?”

 

Sehun shrugged. A heavy sigh escaped him. “What if he doesn’t take my feelings well? I don’t…”

 

“Don’t what?”

 

“… I don’t want to ruin things.”

 

For a moment, Baekhyun just stared at him with a serious look on his face. “Oh,” he then broke the silence, “you don’t want to ruin our friendship, huh.”

 

Finally feeling the weigh of the matter on his shoulder, Sehun looked down over his shoes. “I don’t want to lose him. And you.”

 

Then another pair of shoes came in sight. The next thing he knew was Baekhyun patting him hard on the shoulder. “You’re worrying over nothing!” his friend shouted at him excitedly. “You poor frog.”

 

Sehun lifted his head up to hiss at Baekhyun. “You’re not helping _at all_.”

 

“No, really, I _am_ helping. If this goes beyond well in the end, then it’ll really be because of _me_. Me, your cupid. Now _go_!”

 

 

 

“The last moment I had with him,” his voice gets fainter gradually, “was that afternoon, in front of the school gate. We were quite far from each other. He smiled and waved at me.”

 

 

 

It was a few steps later when he heard Baekhyun calling his name.

 

He turned around and found his friend waving back at him excitedly. “Good luck!” Baekhyun screamed.

 

Sehun laughed. His heart was a little bit eased because of his friend’s bright smile.

 

Really, his friend was the one who made it possible for him.

 

 

 

“And after I confessed, after I got my answer, I called him. Told him everything. He was beyond happy. He said he had a good feeling about it. Then he said,”

 

 

 

“ _Hun-ah, should I confess too?_ ”

 

Sehun was stunned for a moment, but then he immediately got up to sit on his bed. “That’s,” he grinned, “that’s a good idea!”

 

“ _Really?_ ” he could hear the distress growing in Baekhyun’s voice. “ _On the second thought, no, I don’t think so._ ”

 

“Byun Baekhyun, do it.”

 

“ _But, but,_ ” Baekhyun sighed over the speaker, “ _don’t you think it’s too soon?_ ”

 

Sehun snorted against the speaker of his phone. “Dude, you’ve been crushing on him like, what, two years? Remember how you teared up when you found out Park was attending the same high school with us?”

 

“ _Shut the hell up!_ ” Baekhyun shrieked. Sehun pulled his phone away from his ear, laughing in amusement. “ _You don’t have the right to be this confident just because things are going well for you!_ ”

 

“Who said that? It’s still not for sure yet.” Sehun rolled his eyes, gently kicking the lowest metal bar of the gate to his house. “I have to wait for tonight. Gosh. It’s killing me.”

 

“ _Should I suffer like you too?_ ”

 

Sehun smirked, although technically Baekhyun couldn’t see it. “Of course you should.” He giggled. “I’m serious, corgi butt. Just tell him. Tell Chanyeol how you feel.”

 

 

 

“I encouraged him to confess to Chanyeol. I felt so… positive, that day. I thought, if I could get my happiness, then why couldn’t Baekhyun? What could go wrong about expressing your feelings to someone you like?”

 

There’s a pause. A silence. A rather uncomfortable one. Like the calm before the storm.

 

“Everything.” He whispers. “Everything went wrong.”

 

 

 

“ _S-sehun, I – it – it hurts –_ “

 

“What happened?!” Sehun started to raise his voice out of panic. “Where are you?!”

 

“ _I don’t know – near Chanyeol’s –_ “ Baekhyun paused, as if he was choking on his own, “ _it hurts, Sehun, it – it hurts – help me –_ “

 

“What? What hurts?” Sehun stood in the middle of his bedroom, confused and alarmed. Pants. He should change his pants first before going out and find Baekhyun.

 

“ _My… my arm…_ ” Baekhyun’s voice faltered, “ _I fell… and my arm, my arm…_ ”

 

Somehow Sehun could tell it wasn’t the wound that hurt his friend.

 

Sehun opened the door of his bedroom. “I’m coming there.” He said firmly.

 

“ _… no. I don’t – I don’t want to wait here – I want to go. I hate it here. I hate it here. I want to go – please –_ “

 

Sehun halted his steps.

 

Something must’ve happened. Something that wasn’t good, for sure.

 

He felt something brewing in his chest. Sadness, disappointment, regret. On top of that, anger.

 

That Chanyeol guy must’ve had hurt Baekhyun somehow.

 

“Okay. Okay. Leave that place then. We can meet at…” he thought to himself for a moment, “let’s meet in front of the entrance of the block to your house. Let’s meet there. Go there and stay until I come, okay?”

 

“ _… okay_.” Baekhyun’s voice became fainter and fainter. “ _I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry._ ”

 

Sehun gulped down. “Be safe.” He said briefly before he cut the call.

 

He was the one who felt so sorry.

 

 

 

“I regretted everything. I regretted encouraging him to go to Chanyeol. On my way to go to him, all I could think of was how it was all my fault. I wasn’t thinking clear enough. I didn’t know. I didn’t know it would be like that.”

 

He doesn’t dare to glance at Luhan. He has no bravery left to.

 

“When I got there, he was at the other side of the street. I was going to go to him, but he… he didn’t listen. He couldn’t listen, maybe. He tried to cross the street. But there was –“

 

 

 

None of them was aware enough of what was coming until Sehun heard the blaring sound of horn and screeches of rubber against the asphalt.

 

The lights blinded his sight. He immediately covered his eyes with his arm. But when he heard a loud sound of something crashing against another thing, he immediately took his arm away.

 

Nothing prepared him for what he found.

 

And out of self-defense, his brain refused to process everything. It refused to recognize what he was seeing.

 

So he casted his eyes down, feeling the dizziness kicking in. He felt nauseous. He couldn’t move.

 

He just fell onto the asphalt, bottom first. The bones behind it hurt immediately. His back hunched forward, due to the sudden consternation that downed upon him. His arms were somehow paralyzed; his hands were resting somewhere on the asphalt, palms pressing against its rough surface, but he felt nothing. For a moment, his ears lost their function. It was as if there was a detonation which had ruined his eardrums. Or maybe it was a detonation. Maybe something had exploded inside him, ruining everything.

 

In front of him, a chaos unfolded. Some cars pulled over. A number of people gathered. A commotion was involuntarily formed. All because of the boy who was sprawled on the street, next to the sidewalk across where he was frozen on. Sehun couldn’t see the boy’s face. But of course he knew who it was.

 

He knew it too well.

 

 

 

“He…” Sehun frowns, eyes wandering around the view in front of him, “he…”

 

He hears Luhan releasing his breath shakily.

 

“He was…”

 

Gone.

 

Baekhyun was gone.

 

He didn’t know, at that moment. No one did. They thought if they were fast enough to bring the boy to the nearest hospital, if the paramedics did their best to save the boy, they would’ve kept him alive. The boy was still alive when they found him anyway. No one knew. No one expected it. It wasn’t until around seven minutes past midnight that the boy left them. It wasn’t until technically the next day that the boy died.

 

“When I got to him, I thought… I thought I’ve already lost him. Then… then the ambulance came, and they told me… they told me he stood a chance. My friend was going to live. I should put some faith. My friend would live. They told me all that. But –“

 

In the end, Baekhyun was gone.

 

He was already gone before everyone declared so.

 

Even when there were still those faint heartbeats inside him, he was already gone.

 

Baekhyun used to be the one who always stayed back, who was always the last one to leave. On days where he couldn’t walk home together with them, he’d stay in front of the gates and watch his friends walk away until he couldn’t see them anymore. When they were a little bit late for lunch, he’d tell his friends to go eat first without him so they’d still get the dish they wanted. When they arrived at restaurants, he’d tell his friends to wash their hands first while he kept an eye on their belongings. He never had a problem being the last.

 

“Even when I was at the hospital, when I was waiting in front of the ER doors, a Doctor came and told me that I should… I should think about everything in a better way but… but,”

 

But that night, he left first, way too early, earlier than his friends.

 

And what still hurts Sehun to this day, is that not even Baekhyun planned or even wanted to leave that early.

 

It was as if he was forcefully taken.

 

“…so,” Sehun finally hears Luhan’s voice, “that… was what happened.”

 

He braves himself to look at Luhan.

 

What he finds is a pair of red, glassy eyes, and slightly quivering lips.

 

“That was what happened…” Luhan whispers, “before _I_ came to the hospital.”

 

Words dissipate into nothingness in Sehun’s head.

 

This is it. The tingling feeling. Instead of being warm and soft, it’s cold and harsh, making his heart hammer severely against his ribcage. It’s the reminder that urges him to remember, to recall, to admit everything. It’s rough, and it washes over him in stronger force. Everything that was in yellowish scenes is now in vibrant colors.

 

This is the epiphany, the sudden revelation of something from his past, something he should’ve faced long ago.

 

That night, he wasn’t the only one whose time stopped ticking.

 

That night, he wasn’t the only one who died despite being alive still.

 

That night, there was another person, who suffered with him, if not more than what he went through. Ten years of friendship, all gone in a blink of an eye.

 

That night, there was another person who was broken.

 

“Yes.” Sehun answers.

 

Luhan nods. Tears start to fall down across his face. Something inside Sehun breaks even more.

 

“You never told me.” Luhan whispers, voice getting weaker. “And I never asked you.”

 

None of them bothered to get hurt more by talking about what actually happened.

 

“I’m sorry.” Sehun pleads.

 

“I’m so sorry, _Han_ -ah.”

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 


	5. Saturday (Part Two)

 

Lu Han.

 

The Chinese name was a little bit strange to his friends. They called his name in one go; Luhan.

 

But to his best friends, he gave the nickname his parents used for him.

 

‘ _Han_ ’.

 

It was fascinating, how their nicknames all started with the letter ‘h’.

 

Han, Hyun, Hun.

 

Lu Han, Byun Baekhyun, Oh Sehun.

 

He thought the three of them would last for as long as he could think of. Through ups and downs, good and bad days, warmth or coldness, he thought they’d go through it all together for a long, long time.

 

But of course, in a group of people,

 

someone would eventually leave first.

 

 

 

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

 

 

 

“Are you sure you don’t need me to go with you?”

 

Sehun licked his lips nervously before shaking his head. “It’s alright.”

 

“Ay come on, he’s just buying a keyboard, not on his way to the police station.” He heard Baekhyun snorting next to him. “See you tomorrow, Han!”

 

Luhan stayed rooted on his spot, staring at him for a moment, before he finally let it go with a sigh. “Okay then. Be careful on your way.” He smiled before turning around, hands gripping around the straps of his backpack.

 

“Today will be great for you!” Baekhyun sing-songed, and Sehun almost reached his hand out to pinch Baekhyun at the side of his abdomen.

 

Luhan turned around and looked at them with a confused frown.

 

“Nothing. Nothing.” Sehun said instead. “See you tomorrow!”

 

With a chuckle, Luhan waved at them and proceeded to walk again.

 

When they were assured Luhan was already far enough not to hear them, Sehun let out a heavy sigh while Baekhyun laughed at him wholeheartedly. “You jerk.”

 

“Dude you should’ve seen your nervous face!” Baekhyun claimed in the middle of his laughter. “Gosh you looked so stupid.”

 

Sehun didn’t even have the energy to retort back. He was very nervous. It must’ve infected Baekhyun, because eventually the laughter subsided down. “Is something wrong?” Baekhyun asked.

 

“What if it goes bad?”

 

Baekhyun frowned at him. “Why do you think it’ll go bad?”

 

Sehun shrugged. A heavy sigh escaped him. “What if he doesn’t take my feelings well? I don’t…”

 

“Don’t what?”

 

“… I don’t want to ruin things.”

 

 

 

“I ruined everything. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

 

 

 

“ _Couldn’t wait until later?_ ”

 

Sehun could hear the mischievousness in Luhan’s voice. He could hear it so well. Luhan must be holding back a huge smile, considering the tone. Luhan was in such a great mood. He didn’t have the heart to break it.

 

But he had to.

 

His hand was shaking. Very badly. He almost lost the grip around his phone. He gulped down the imaginary lump in his throat which had felt so dry it was starting to hurt him. “H-han,”

 

Luhan must’ve sensed his discomfort, because he went silent for a moment. “ _Is something wrong, Hun?_ ”

 

“Th…the hospital near Baekhyun’s neighborhood.” He still managed to speak. “P-please… please come. The ER. Please come now. As f-fast as you can.”

 

“ _What? Hospital? Are you okay? Did you get hurt?_ ”

 

Sehun shook his head out of habit. “Baekhyun.”

 

“… _oh God, what happened to Baekhyun?!_ ”

 

“He –“ words got stuck in his throat again. Sehun closed his eyes. “Please just come –  please, _Lu Han_ , please –“

 

Luhan didn’t say anything more after that. He could hear Luhan screaming to his parents about going to the hospital. Everything was a chaos.

 

He dropped his hand, letting his phone clatter on the seat next to him.

 

 _Fuck_.

 

He really ruined everything.

 

 

 

“I’m sorry.” He whispers. “I’m sorry.”

 

 

 

Friday, August 5th, 2016.

 

Seven minutes after midnight.

 

Baekhyun was pronounced dead.

 

It was another chaos, in front of the doors to the ER. Baekhyun’s parents were there. The mother was screaming, crying, screaming again. ‘ _My son_ ’, she wailed, ‘ _my son_ ’. Luhan’s parents were also there, trying to console their mourning friends. Soon enough, he saw his own parents running towards them, with Serin tailing behind.

 

The both of them were hiding at the corner of the hallway, unseen by the adults. Sehun thought Serin had seen them, but even if she had, she must’ve decided not to go to them. Maybe she couldn’t face her own brother and the boy she had always treated like her own sibling as well.

 

Strange. He wasn’t crying. Luhan wasn’t crying. The both of them were being so silent, so calm. Like a pair of perfectly made robots. Looking humane but weren’t humane. Luhan was so lifeless in front of him.

 

Then came the weak, tired, raspy whisper from Luhan’s lips.

 

“How could this happen?”

 

Sehun’s gaze stayed on the white tiles beneath his feet. His back bone ached. That was the only thing he felt. The ache. Maybe it wasn’t in his bones. Maybe it was somewhere else, like in his chest, or in his head, or even inside his stomach.

 

Or maybe the ache couldn’t find any spot to latch on because the void inside him was getting too big, consuming everything of him.

 

“Hun-ah…” soft, trembling voice called for him once more. “Sehun-ah…”

 

He wanted to run away.

 

But his mind was not in sync with his limbs that night.

 

“Am I dreaming?”

 

Then he finally felt something else; something heavy that shattered into pieces.

 

“Sehun-ah… are we dreaming?”

 

 _I hope we are_. He whispered inside. _I fucking hope we are_.

 

“How…” the voice trailed off, fading into a whisper. A broken, painful whisper.

 

“… how do we wake up?”

 

 

 

 

“I’m so sorry.” He repeats, and repeats. “I’m so sorry.”

 

Luhan – _Han_ – wipes the tears on his face away. He shakes his head. “You left me.”

 

Cold runs down his spine.

 

“You left me there alone.”

 

 

 

He wanted to cry. To scream. To channel all this sadness and rage out. But even his tears and voice betrayed him; they wouldn’t come out. Nothing of him was able to help him. Not even himself wanted to help him.

 

 _I don’t know_.

 

_I don’t know._

_I don’t know_.

 

_I’m sorry. I don’t know._

_I’m so sorry_.

 

“Sehun? Han?”

 

He gasped when he heard the voice coming from his side.

 

There was Serin, looking at them, worry vivid on her face. She must have cried before coming to them.

 

“N-noona,” Luhan called weakly.

 

Serin took a hold of Luhan’s hand. He could see Luhan trembling, on the verge of weeping his heart out, but somehow he held it in. Then Serin’s eyes turned on him. Curious, trespassing.

 

He couldn’t handle it.

 

He couldn’t handle Serin’s stare.

 

And in that moment, his limbs finally listened to his wishes.

 

And so, he moved. Started walking. Then after a few steps, he started to run. Ignoring the desperate calls of his name.

 

He ran and ran. Out of the hall. Out of the hospital building. To the streets.

 

He ran and ran.

 

Since that night, he became so good at running away.

 

 

 

“You left me. I never got you back.”

 

 

 

For three days, he locked himself in his bedroom.

 

No one could persuade him to come out. But no one forced him to. He knew his father had the master key to the doors in the house, but none of them used it to drag him out of his room. It was just Serin who occasionally came in to bring some light food and drink for him.

 

Three days. He spent them being sprawled on his bed. Thinking. Not thinking. Then thinking again. Then not thinking of anything. He skipped the funeral. Somehow his brain, once again, refused to recognize what was happening. There was no sense of obligation, of belonging, of doing something he should be doing, that he felt. He stayed idle, like he was just existing, like a non-player character in a game, waiting for a player to come in and make him useful for once.

 

On the fourth day, however, he rose from his bed.

 

He opened the door to his bedroom. Grabbed his towel and showered. Put on his uniform and wore the white sneaker that was never his favorite until that moment. He greeted the entire house nonchalantly, like it was just another usual morning. No one said a thing about his behavior.

 

He went to school. Nothing was quite the same. His friends were much quieter than usual. Why, he had asked. His friends couldn’t answer. There was no Luhan; they said his parents had asked permission from the teacher to let him stay at home until he was ready to go back.

 

There was no Baekhyun.

 

Everyone said he died.

 

They didn’t literally say a word about it, but it was implied, painfully and vividly, from their faces. The words were there on Minseok’s face when he first greeted him in the morning. They were there in Jongdae’s shaky voice when he asked if he was alright.

 

That was when it came down onto him. Suffocated him.

 

Nothing was the same anymore.

 

Not even an hour after he arrived at school, he ran back home.

 

He rushed into his bedroom and locked himself inside again.

 

He screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

 

Nothing was the same anymore.

 

It wasn’t his life anymore.

 

 

 

“I never got you back, Hun-ah.” Luhan faces him. “I thought I did. But even when you were there, in front of me, I realized that I… I’ve lost you.”

 

 

 

“It’s my fault.”

 

“It’s my fault.”

 

“ _It’s my fault._ ”

 

Whenever his parents tried to approach him about the matter, about the incident which he was the sole witness for, that was what he answered their questions with.

 

Whenever he tried to think about what actually happened that night over and over again, that was the only answer his already messed up mind came up with for him.

 

In the end, that became the only conclusion.

 

It was all because of him.

 

One day, he stopped answering. He stopped saying those words.

 

On a cloudy morning, he stepped out of the house.

 

His legs brought him to the front of the house he had become so familiar with. And before the front door, he found the person he was looking for, complete in his school uniform and red backpack. He noticed the letter ‘H’ shaped key chain was still hanging on the puller of the bag’s zipper.

 

Luhan still looked as lifeless as the last time he saw him.

 

His bright, glowing Lu Han was gone. Who he found was a strange version of Lu Han, whose eyes were casted down on the pavement as he walked towards the gate to his house.

 

It really wasn’t his life anymore. He couldn’t recognize anything.

 

There was no use to live the life they used to live in anymore.

 

They should start another life,

 

because staying in this one would only hurt them.

 

And that was what he proposed to Luhan.

 

“Let’s be strangers.”

 

The look in Luhan’s dim eyes only made him feel more nauseous.

 

“Let’s pretend that you don’t know me, and I don’t know you.”

 

Luhan still didn’t say a thing.

 

“I’m moving to another school. Another district. You won’t have to worry about seeing me.”

 

Luhan still didn’t say a thing, and Sehun wished he did, would.

 

“Let’s… live like we never knew each other.” He could barely hear himself.

 

After all of those words, Sehun decided that it was enough. Luhan would’ve gotten what he was talking about. The silence told him so.

 

And all Luhan asked him was,

 

“Why?”

 

In a raspy, barely audible whisper. The voice he couldn’t recognize.

 

Even Luhan wasn’t Luhan anymore.

 

Sehun didn’t answer. For he didn’t know which one Luhan was asking; the reason of him wanting them to be strangers or the reason to why he was leaving him.

 

So he just turned around, taciturnly, and started to walk away.

 

Luhan never asked him to stop.

 

That was the day Sehun started to walk away from the only life he had ever known, with the will of starting anew in mind.

 

Back then, he didn’t know, that instead of moving elsewhere, he’d get stuck in the same place. The same place that would feel so different. The same life that would feel so foreign to him.

 

Because ever since that night, in the hospital, his time had stopped ticking.

 

 

 

“Why?” Luhan repeats the question he had asked two years ago. “Why did you do that? Why did you leave me?”

 

Sehun turns to his side to face Luhan properly. He rests his gaze on Luhan’s face. Tired eyes, tears stained cheeks, slightly red nose.

 

He’s really sitting in front of his Luhan again.

 

“Why did you want to be strangers with me?” Luhan asks more, voice soft yet noticeably demanding. “Was it too much for you? To see me.”

 

Is that what Luhan have been thinking for the past two years?

 

Has Luhan ever blamed himself instead?

 

“If you’re really sorry, then you’d tell me. Everything you felt.”

 

He’s really sorry.

 

And he indeed has planned on telling Luhan everything.

 

“I was scared.”

 

Luhan’s eyebrows twitch slightly at the answer he probably didn’t expect.

 

“That you’ll hate me.”

 

 

 

Sehun thought about how things could’ve been if only he never liked Luhan that way.

 

If it was the case, then he wouldn’t have been so obvious in front of Baekhyun. Then Baekhyun wouldn’t have confronted him about it and then encouraged him to confess. Then that day, two years ago, instead of parting ways, they would’ve walked home together. Baekhyun wouldn’t have went to Chanyeol’s house. There wouldn’t have been any talk about confessions. That night, instead of being in the streets, the three of them would’ve been in Baekhyun’s room, probably playing a game on their phones.

 

They would still be complete.

 

Baekhyun wouldn’t have died.

 

He and Luhan wouldn’t have strayed from each other.

 

His first conclusion was that he shouldn’t really have liked Luhan. Maybe they really were supposed to be friends. Best of friends. Maybe he shouldn’t have wanted more than what he was allowed to have.

 

Look at what his feelings had caused.

 

The death of someone Luhan cherished so much.

 

It wouldn’t be a surprise that Luhan had started to hate him.

 

It wouldn’t be a surprise, but he still wouldn’t be able to stand the hatred in Luhan’s eyes when they meet later; if Luhan ever wanted to meet him again after everything.

 

He wouldn’t be able to take it if Luhan declared his resentment towards him.

 

Maybe Luhan had started to wish they never met each other. Maybe he had wished Baekhyun never talked to him first, years ago.

 

And somehow, Sehun could understand.

 

He, too, wished they never met.

 

Maybe his existence was a curse for both Baekhyun and Luhan.

 

With that mind, he went to Luhan’s house and asked his friend, whom he was about to give his heart to weeks before, to be strangers.

 

 

 

“Why…” Luhan whispers in disbelief, “why did you think I would ever hate you?”

 

Sehun shakes his head. Something bubbles up from inside him. Sobs. The sobs are threatening to burst out. “Because if it wasn’t for me, he would – _Baekhyun_ – he would still be –“

 

He had been through this talk with his father yesterday. He was finally at an enough amount of peace with himself. But now, as he finally faces the victim of his wrongdoing, those thoughts are back again, barging into his head.

 

He isn’t, wasn’t the victim. He has never been the victim of the whole tragedy.

 

Luhan is.

 

Yet the pain, that had been consuming him from the inside, had blinded him so severely to the point where he thought he was the one who suffered the most.

 

While in the truth, he was the cause of the unfortunate event.

 

“Hun-ah,” Luhan calls softly, and it triggers his tears to fall, “I would never hate you.”

 

Sehun curls into his own figure. “Why wouldn’t you?” he croaks out. “Even I hate myself.”

 

He decided to hate himself before Luhan could.

 

“It wasn’t because of you. God dammit, Sehun, why would you think it was because of you?!” he sees Luhan’s hand curled right next to his own lap. “Who even told you that?!”

 

Slowly, he raises his head to be able to look at Luhan. “But wasn’t it?”

 

Luhan lets out an exasperated sigh, eyes staring back at him in pain. This is the person he hurt the most. Not his father, not his mother, not Serin, Jongin, not even himself. Luhan is the one who gets hurt the most because of him.

 

But the person he had hurt the most is looking back at him with so much worry and fondness.

 

“It was an accident.” Luhan’s words ring in his ears, like an obnoxious déjà vu. It was what his father had said over and over again. “Anyone who had described that night had made it clear that it was an accident. Even you. Even if you said that it was your fault. It was an accident, Hun-ah. _Hyun_ , he –“

 

‘ _Hyun! Baekhyun!’_

 

“He was just…”

 

‘ _You, both of you, are my best people!_ ’

 

“He was just… very, very unfortunate…”

 

‘ _I’m doing this because you guys are doing this as well, okay. Go big or go home!_ ’

 

“He was,” Luhan pauses, maybe to prevent himself from choking on his own, “he was…”

 

‘ _Han, you okay? Hun-ah, what happened to Han?_ ’

 

“He was… there, for almost half of my life,” Luhan presses a palm against his chest, “and I… I think I died… at least that half of me died… with him –“

 

‘ _Han knows it. I won’t be this happy if I never found him._ ’

 

“He was… the one who made me laugh the most, Hun-ah.” Luhan’s eyes are full of tears again. “But then he was –“

 

‘ _Whoever we might be in ten years, I just wish we’d still get to do this. Hanging out in one of our rooms. Or houses._ ’

 

“He was gone.” Luhan says, almost inaudibly. “Because of a very unfortunate event. He was gone. That was it. He was just… gone.”

 

‘ _I love you, both of you!_ ’

 

“It was as if… as if he was pulled out of this world. Maybe because… because he was too good to be here. You know, he… he never did anything bad, Sehun. He was always so, so good, so kind, so nice to everyone he knew. Everybody loved him, right? Maybe whoever up there realized that he was too good to be in this world, so he got taken back. He got pulled back. He was sent back… back home.”

 

Sehun reaches out a hand to wipe away the tears that are falling down on Luhan’s right cheek.

 

“You see now, right?” Luhan smiles at him. Even with all those tears, he still smiles for him. “It wasn’t because of you. Not even that man who drove that car – it wasn’t because of anybody. He was just called to… to go home.”

 

‘ _See you tomorrow!_ ’

 

Somewhere better.

 

Their friend, Baekhyun, their dearest friend, he’s gone to somewhere better.

 

There’s a collateral beauty in it. At least, despite everything, their friend is now in a much better place. A happy and beautiful one, they’d like to believe.

 

They should start seeing it, the beauty that follows with the misery.

 

Slowly, carefully, Sehun places a hand on Luhan’s right shoulder. Gently, he pulls Luhan’s figure towards him, and when Luhan’s forehead rests against his collarbone, he spreads out his arms and engulfs his long lost friend in an embrace; he hopes it’s warm enough to stop the trembling. “How did you do that?” he mumbles, lips grazing on the fabric of Luhan’s hoodie.

 

“Do what?” Luhan asks, voice raspy and tired, yet also content.

 

“Figure all of that by yourself.” Sehun answers. _Not giving in to the temptation of blaming anyone for the pain_ , he wanted to say.

 

“I just… thought of it like that.” Luhan wraps his own arms around Sehun’s torso. Their laps are pressing against one another. “You. It’s been so hard on you, right?” Sehun feels a soft pat on his back. “I’m sorry. I should’ve stayed.”

 

“Han…” Sehun whispers, the guilt kicking in again, “I should’ve never done that to you. To us. I was… I was so stupid. Please forgive me. Please forgive me.”

 

He shouldn’t have cut Luhan out of his life.

 

And maybe, Luhan shouldn’t have just agreed with his decision.

 

The both of them should’ve put more effort in understanding each other and stayed to fix one another as well.

 

“See? Not everything is your fault.” Luhan pats his back again. “You, throwing me out of your life. That was mean. _Really_ mean.” Luhan’s chuckle vibrates against his chest. “And that was the only thing you were fault at. I was at fault, too, for not trying to be the better one between us. That was it. That was the only fault we’ve done. Stop… stop blaming yourself for unfortunate things that happen beyond your control.”

 

He could’ve stayed. He could’ve just told Luhan about his troubled mind. He could’ve been there to mend and be mended by Luhan. But he left instead. That was in his control.

 

But death, is something else. Something far beyond his reach, beyond his knowledge. That was why he couldn’t find the correct reason behind Baekhyun’s death. It was far beyond his control.

 

Maybe he should listen to Luhan, to his sister, to his father, and stop blaming anyone; himself.

 

“I’m sorry.” He murmurs. He had lost count on how many times did he say the words today.

 

Luhan is silent for a moment. “I forgive you.” he says.

 

That sounds very relieving for him.

 

“Do you forgive me, Sehun?” Luhan raises his head to meet his eyes.

 

Sehun stares back into the pair of doe eyes, looking tired yet still warm. “I do.”

 

“Then,” Luhan smiles softly, “do you forgive yourself?”

 

He had wronged himself.

 

He chose to stop being happy. To feel guilty if he ever feel any amount of happiness. To surround himself with a strange environment in order to forget his past. He had tortured himself.

 

It’s time to quit.

 

It’s time to be in peace with his own self.

 

“I do.” He nods at Luhan. “I do now.”

 

The soft smile on Luhan’s lips grows wider. His eyes are noticeably puffy, his nose is red from crying, and his lips are a little bit pale. But the smile is there, and it gives life to Luhan’s face.

 

Luhan was, is, has always been, and will always be beautiful to him.

 

“Lu Han,” Sehun calls out of the blue, “I like you.”

 

There it is, his second confession.

 

“I like you.” he repeats. “If it isn’t quite right yet for me to say I love you, then I’d say I like you. I really, really like you, Lu Han. I always have.”

 

Luhan looks taken aback. His gaze darts around his face. Then the calm look settles back again. “Have you told the universe about your feelings?” he says with a faint smirk.

 

Sehun chuckles, feeling shy out of sudden, but not less determined. “I am doing it right now.”

 

“Oh, so,” Luhan raises an eyebrow, looking mischievous, “I’m your universe?” he says before he lets out a giggle, probably feeling embarrassed because of his cheesy statement.

 

Instead, Sehun shrugs, shoulders finally free of burden. “I figured out that you’re the only one who matters.”

 

It should’ve been like that. He should’ve realized that sooner. He needed no permission from anybody else. He liked Luhan. And that was it.

 

“Well thank you, Oh Sehun,” Luhan detaches his arms from Sehun’s figure, “for liking me.”

 

It makes Sehun retract his arms back as well. “How… how about you? How do you feel?”

 

He can’t read the expression on Luhan’s face. All he sees is the smile that hasn’t left Luhan’s lips, but he can’t be sure.

 

“Honestly, I never realized about my feelings for you until you confessed to me that day.”

 

‘ _I… I like you, Han. Not just as a friend. It’s… something more than that._ ’

 

“I mean, I never thought about it that way. So when you told me that you like me, not just as a friend, I couldn’t say anything to that. That was why I asked you to wait until night.” The gloom swirls back onto Luhan’s face, but it’s comforted by the smile that has been there. “Never got to tell you the answer I found.”

 

Out of impulse, because he feels like he really should do it, Sehun takes a hold of Luhan’s hand and squeezes it gently.

 

“After thinking about it for a long while, I found that it was mutual. What I felt for you.” the delicate timbre of Luhan’s voice tells him that Luhan, too, remembers the day that was supposed to be the start of something beautiful with a tint of sadness and regret. Just like him. “God knows how much I love Baekhyun. I could even say he was my soulmate. But with you… it’s something else. It has always been something else. It’s like… if I wanted Baekhyun to be happy by finding something or someone that would make it possible, then I wanted you to be happy with me.”

 

Warmth and coldness burst inside his chest simultaneously. This type of scene should’ve been pretty. Shot with a tinge of pink hues at the corners of the frame. It’s a love confession, a simple yet tender and meaningful one. But the more Sehun tries to see it, the more it feels sad. Beautiful, but tragic. He finally realizes that they really had missed such a huge chance in being happy in the simplest, cheesiest way possible. A pair of best friends that turn into lovers; the perfect plot to a romance movie.

 

But then he also finds that maybe this is how they were meant to love. Finding the meaning of each other after long period of grief. Realizing how much they want to make each other happy after being each other’s pain. They forgive what they had done to one another, pour out their deepest fears and most honest feelings, and accept that they were hurting. They’re still hurting. But now, at last, they have each other to mend and be mended by.

 

And Sehun thinks it’s more beautiful. It’s sad, it’s been tragic, but it’s beautiful. As beautiful as the look in Luhan’s eyes at the moment; nervous yet hopeful.

 

“I,” Sehun starts with a whisper, “I want you to be happy with me too. I want to make you happy.”

 

The smile grows wider. Luhan looks like he’s starting to glow again. The light is there once more. “Hun-ah,” he says, “before thinking about my happiness, you’ve got to think about yours first.”

 

He’s reminded of the latest conversation he had with Serin. About being happy. His sister had told him that he can, and should, be happy. He should do it for himself. And now Luhan is telling him to think of himself before him. He’s starting to see the silver lining.

 

In order to make anyone else happy, he has to be happy first.

 

“Let’s be happy, Oh Sehun.” Luhan grins. “By then, we can make each other happy too.”

 

Sehun nods. Twice, thrice. It sounds very promising. Like the best, wisest solution to the problem he has been facing for two years. He feels content, forgiven, considered and cared of. And now, he basks all of them in. He doesn’t feel guilty anymore.

 

“But, Han,” Sehun says in a small voice, “does that mean… you like me too?”

 

Out of his expectation, Luhan suddenly laughs. The kind of laughter where he throws his head back, giggling like a little kid who had just discovered the most interesting fact in his little world. When their gazes meet again, there’s a twinkle in Luhan’s eyes that makes warmth and relief wash over Sehun’s chest. There it is, his Luhan.

 

 _His_ Luhan.

 

“I can’t believe you just said that!” Luhan exclaims with a grin, his right hand balled in a fist which the gently, playfully pushes against Sehun’s left shoulder. “It does, Sehun. I like you too. I like you back.”

 

The excitement is trapped in the breath he’s holding back. He can’t let it out just yet. “If I say I love you,” Sehun approaches slowly, “will you… say the same too?”

 

Luhan tilts his head. “Do you? Love me.”

 

“… I can’t really say that. We’re still so young. I honestly still have no idea about love. But one thing I’m very sure of is that I’m heading there.” Sehun straightens his back. “Sooner or later, I’ll love you.”

 

He can feel it. It’s as if the future is already vivid in his head. He could picture them together, standing close enough to feel each other’s warmth, exchanging gentle smiles with each other. They’d love. He still doesn’t know what the future holds, but he’s sure they’d go through it all while loving each other.

 

But it has to start somewhere. One thing he knows about love is that it doesn’t grow overnight. This feelings inside him, they are the seeds that are buried under the soil, and he swears to nurture them diligently until it grows into a beautiful flower, which by then he’d call love.

 

It’s still quite far, or maybe even near, but it’s there for him. For them.

 

“Then that’s good enough.” Luhan nods with another small grin. “Whatever you feel for me, I promise you I feel the same for you.”

 

Finally, he releases out the breath he’s been holding back. “Gosh,” he chuckles, “I finally did it, huh.”

 

“Hm?”

 

“Confessing to you for the second time.”

 

Another giggle escapes Luhan. “It went well, huh.”

 

“Very.” Sehun chuckles. His gaze then wanders around the carriage. The view outside the window is still pitch black. The mirth on his face falters. “How long have we been here? Aren’t we supposed to arrive by now?”

 

Luhan also takes a look at the windows. Sehun glances at his wrist watch. It’s seven minutes after midnight. He feels a light _pang_ inside his chest. He was about to rest his arm down again when he notices something; the second hand isn’t working.

 

“I think my watch has just stopped working.” He says. “Like, a few minutes ago?”

 

“Hun-ah,” Luhan calls for him instead, gaining his attention, “it’s alright. We’re going to arrive soon.”

 

Sehun turns at Luhan. “Yeah I know. It’s just that…” his gaze trails off towards the windows again, “it’s weird. The ride isn’t supposed to be this long.”

 

He watches as Luhan casts his gaze down over his laps. Something looks a little bit off with him. “Yeah.” Luhan murmurs.

 

“Is something wrong?” Sehun asks out of worry.

 

Luhan lifts his head back up again, settling his gaze on him. “Hun-ah,” he calls softly, “we’re going home.”

 

Feeling the peculiarity of Luhan’s gestures, Sehun nods out of habit, hesitant. “Yes, indeed.”

 

Adding more to his confusion, Luhan shakes his head. “Maybe not the ones you’re thinking of.”

 

“What are you talking about?”

 

Luhan’s eyes dart around; he seems nervous. As if he has to break something important yet disheartening to him. And maybe he indeed has to. “Sehun-ah,” his voice starts small, “something happened.”

 

Sehun leans forward slightly, feeling like he can’t hear Luhan clearly if he doesn’t. “Something?”

 

“You… you don’t remember?”

 

“Remember what?” Sehun feels cold runs down his spine. “Han, what happened?”

 

“Maybe you didn’t know. You were asleep.” Luhan concludes to himself. “You didn’t wake up. I was woken up, but you weren’t.”

 

“Lu Han, what happened?”

 

“I… I don’t know.” Luhan hangs his head low again. “I don’t know either. There… there was weird noises from the outside.”

 

_When he’s afloat in the limbo between consciousness and slumber, he hears strange noises around him. The kind of noise he couldn’t pinpoint what. All he knows that it isn’t stopping._

 

“That was when I woke up. You were asleep next to me. The whole carriage was shaking, and I was… stunned, the whole time.”

 

_Then he feels the surface beneath his figure move. It’s shaking, being tossed to the side, and his sense of gravity tells him that he’s tumbling down with his surroundings. Something is happening._

_But he can’t open his eyes. He wants to, but his eyelids don’t even budge._

_Why can’t he open his eyes?_

 

“Then the next thing I knew was… we… we tumbled over. I immediately reached out for your hand,”

 

_He feels warmth around his left hand. The kind of warmth that emanates from someone. Soft, warm touch engulfs his hand. Somehow, he feels calm for a moment._

 

“and it was suddenly dark. It was so dark, and I… I didn’t know what happened after that.”

_An alarmingly loud sound explodes around him._

 

 _Something is happening_.

 

“But then I was opening my eyes again, and you were still there. Asleep. I thought I was just having a bad dream. I got up and walked around to clear my mind. But when I looked over the window…” Luhan points at the window right next to them. Sehun follows the path Luhan’s finger shows and leaned closer to the window to see the view outside.

 

He holds his breath.

 

“There’s nothing.” Luhan murmurs. “Literally nothing. No matter how much I look at it. I mean, even if there are no lights outside, the moonlight should be enough for our eyes to make up some silhouette. But as you see… there’s nothing.”

 

“What…” Sehun whispers, “what’s going on…?”

 

“Even the door to another carriage is locked.” Luhan then points at the connecting door which Sehun had used earlier. “And it’s also pitch black at the other side of the door. Those doors aren’t supposed to be locked, and the lights should always be on whenever the train is moving.”

 

Sehun gulps down; his throat suddenly feels dry.

 

“It’s like we’re stuck in one place. A very dark place. But,” Luhan’s gaze wanders over the floor, “but you can feel this thing move, right?”

 

It’s true; the carriage is still moving. There’s the subtle buzz on the surface of the floor, indicating that the train is still going on. But the darkness outside the windows isn’t making them sure.

 

“Something happened.” He hears Luhan’s voice again. “Something must’ve happened earlier.”

 

Sehun gets up from his seat, eyes settling down on Luhan. “Is this a dream?” he croaks out the only logical explanation he could think of at the moment. Maybe it’s been a long dream. Maybe he’s still asleep.

 

Luhan smiles at him; it looks sad. “I wondered about the same thing too.”

 

“If… if it’s not, then are we…” he holds his breath to give way to the other conclusion he had in mind, “are we…”

 

“We’re going home.” Luhan says. “I don’t know what exactly happened, but we’re going home.”

 

It sounds surreal and frightening now. Somehow it now sounds like they hold a very contrast meaning from the one it held just minutes ago for him. “Home.” He mouths out.

 

“Home.” Luhan repeats his own word.

 

“What if… what if it’s not… the ones we know?” he asks, more to himself.

 

Luhan shrugs weakly. “It’ll still be home, Hun-ah.”

 

Home. It feels strange. There’s no familiarity in the word, not as much as it once held. He feels nauseous. He’s not ready.

 

He admits it in shaky whisper; “I’m scared.”

 

Right after he echoed out those words, he notices something from his peripheral vision. The once ink black windows now have faint hues of yellow and lilac bursting slowly from the sides. Soon enough, a line of light shines through the glass; it’s the sunlight. Eventually, it gets warmer inside the carriage.

 

Sehun holds his breath when he recognizes the view that becomes clearer outside. He recognizes it right away. It’s the view he’d always see whenever he goes to and comes back from school.

 

They’re nearing the Yongsan station.

 

They’re nearing home.

 

“So much for a twenty minutes ride, huh.” He hears Luhan’s voice, light and calming, with a hint of playfulness.

 

The uneasiness in his chest hasn’t dissipated yet. He looks at Luhan, breath short and nervous. How could Luhan be so calm?

 

He notices Luhan lifting up a hand to reach for him.

 

“It’s alright.” Luhan assures him with a smile. “I’ll be with you.”

 

It’s a slow process for him to understand the meaning behind Luhan’s stretched out hand. But still, with no hesitation, he takes it. He lets Luhan intertwine their fingers. And in that moment, he feels relieved. Like a ton of burden has been lifted off his shoulders. Luhan is here. He shouldn’t fear anything, for Luhan is here with him.

 

He’s not alone.

 

He was never alone.

 

Everyone around him, they always tried to make him see that he wasn’t alone. But he couldn’t see that past his grief. Past his choice to suffer all by himself. However, now he does see it. He does feel it.

 

He’s not alone.

 

When he turns to his side to take a peek at the view outside once more, he could see the shape of the station building. They’re nearing their destination.

 

And he’s not alone.

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 


	6. Sunday

 

There’s no one at the station.

 

There’s just the two of them, stepping down the carriage. There’s no one inside other carriages before them. No one waiting at the booths. No one sitting on the benches. Just the two of them. Even the environment around them is silent, save for the faint sound of morning breeze and echoes of birds singing.

 

Sehun feels a tug at his hand. Luhan’s fingers are still intertwined with his. It makes a smile spread across his face, and he can feel the tips of the apple of his cheeks getting warm.

 

“Let’s go.” Luhan muses.

 

And so, they walk out of the station. All the way to their neighborhood. Everything around them looks familiar. They’ve been going around the area for so many times. One thing that makes the material difference is that there’s no one around them. The streets are empty. They are the only ones walking down the pavement.

 

He feels the familiar coldness running down his spine. But it’s just for a brief moment, and before he could dwell deeper on it, his mind is already occupied with the warmth from Luhan’s hand against his once more. It feels natural, to be holding Luhan’s hand. It’s feels natural to be walking in such a slow pace with Luhan like this, side by side, without properly exchanging any form of communication.

 

This feels like something that should’ve been done since long ago.

 

Maybe it, indeed, should have.

 

“It might sound random, but,” Luhan’s voice slightly surprises him out of his reverie, “did you hear what happened to… Chanyeol?”

 

The name still causes a bitter taste on his tongue. “He moved out. That’s all I know.”

 

About three months after Baekhyun’s death, Chanyeol moved out of the city with his entire family.

 

“I heard you ruined his face.” Luhan snorts.

 

Sehun turns at Luhan, frowning, defensive. “It was just a punch.”

 

“Yeah, a very hard one, they said.” Luhan laughs, lifting his unoccupied hand up to massage the frown between Sehun’s forehead with his thumb. “How did it feel? After you punched him.”

 

It was days before he started going to his new school in Seodaemun. He just happened to stumble upon Chanyeol that day on his way back from the convenience store. He didn’t even say a thing to the noticeably taller guy. All he could think of was Baekhyun’s sobs and upset face, which Chanyeol had caused. And his demons took over him, making him think that he could easily consider Chanyeol another cause behind the event. After all, Baekhyun became so messed up like that because of Chanyeol.

 

And so, without a word, Sehun launched a punch, with a strength he never thought he had, against Chanyeol’s face.

 

He walked away as soon as he saw Chanyeol falling down on his knees on the pavement, and never looked back.

 

“It felt horrible.” Sehun admits.

 

It did feel horrible for him.

 

He had thought he’d feel satisfied. That was the least he could do to Chanyeol for breaking Baekhyun’s heart. He had thought at least a tiny, very tiny piece of his pain could be lifted up. But there was no sort of comfort he felt and resolution he acquired from it.

 

In the end, he felt horrible about what he did.

 

“Really?” Luhan sounds fairly astonished.

 

Sehun shrugs. “There was no point in doing that, after all.” He lets out the mild embarrassment he feels in a chuckle. “It only made me feel more bad about myself.”

 

Luhan echoes his chuckle. “So you regret it?”

 

“Honestly?” Sehun’s lips juts forward in a pout. “Not really.” He then giggles when Luhan nudges his arm with his elbow, making him stumble on his own feet slightly. “I do. Kind of. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

 

There’s a pause on Luhan’s part, and it tells Sehun that Luhan has something to break to him. “He died. Last January.”

 

That makes Sehun’s legs halt themselves involuntarily, holding Luhan back along. Luhan stares up at him, the gaze in his eyes soft and understanding.

 

“How?” is the only question Sehun could come up with. It’s the only question he has the right to ask, after all.

 

“I only heard about it from Minseok. He said Chanyeol died in a crash.” Luhan explains, voice hushed, as if he doesn’t want anybody else to hear it when there is nobody around them. “He drove his father’s car for the first time, and maybe he lost control. A single car crash; he ran the car against a bridge’s handrails. It was January, the streets were slippery after all.”

 

Something builds up in his chest, suffocating it, making it feel much heavier than it should. Sehun releases the thing through a long, heavy sigh. “That’s… horrible.”

 

Luhan nods in agreement. “That really is.”

 

In the end, no matter how much the bitterness he feels about Chanyeol, a life taken so soon is still sad and unfair. Everyone deserves a long life, one where they make mistakes, learn from them, and work on the betterment of themselves. Chanyeol, too, deserved a chance to grow and be better.

 

“What do you think he told Baekhyun? That day.” Luhan continues with a question. “What did he say that Baekhyun was so upset?”

 

Sehun glances at Luhan before dropping his gaze on the pavement. “I don’t know.” He answers helplessly. “I… never wanted to know.”

 

But at the same time, he wishes he knows.

 

Although it doesn’t matter anymore.

 

He feels a tug on his hand. Luhan starts walking again, which he follows right away. They route they’re taking is different from the one he used to take. This one doesn’t head to his or Luhan’s house right away. Maybe Luhan wants to take a look around the parts of the neighborhood which they haven’t properly visited for a long time.

 

“What did you do? For the last two years.” Luhan asks out of the blue.

 

Sehun tries to think of any memorable thing he had done during that period of time. Somehow, he finds none. His memories of yesterdays are all blur. “Existing.” He answers instead. He doesn’t know how else to describe it. “You?”

 

Luhan smacks his lips together for a brief second. “Trying to live.”

 

The words put their heavy weight on him.

 

“You know, after you walked away from me that day,” Luhan starts off slowly, as if explaining everything hurts him; maybe it does, “I… had a very, very hard time.”

 

Sehun bites his bottom lip. The words get heavier.

 

“I…” Luhan huffs softly, “I wanted to kill myself.”

 

There’s a loud _thump_ thundering in his head.

 

“I still remember how I felt so… helpless. Purposeless. But you know what?” Luhan keeps on walking, although his voice trembles. “I can’t remember why exactly did I become so sure to end my life. I can’t remember anymore, what was my last straw. Was it just because Baekhyun died? Was it also because you left? I feel like there was more to it. It doesn’t matter anymore, but I guess it did matter a lot that time.”

 

He gulps down the guilt and resentment for himself that are crawling up his throat.

 

“And I remember how I sneaked into the bathroom at my parents’ bedroom. I was going to steal my mom’s sleeping pills and down, like, at least a dozen of them. But well, she caught me.” Luhan lets out a soft laugh. “She wondered if I was having trouble with sleeping, and instead of just saying no or lying with anything, I… broke down in front of her. And I told her. Everything.”

 

Sehun can imagine it. Luhan, crying on the bathroom floor in his mother’s arms. Luhan, stuttering with his words as he pours the content of his heart. Luhan, being consoled by his mother.

 

Luhan had the courage to admit that he was broken, unlike him.

 

Luhan has always been much stronger than him.

 

“There were a few things she told me, when she tried to comfort me with all her best. I can’t recall them anymore. But one thing that stayed in my head was this sentence. ‘Try to live while being alive.’”

 

Try to live while being alive.

 

He was alive, but he put no effort in living.

 

“It didn’t work right away like magic, of course. The next few months were still like a hell to me. It took me that long to understand her words. So simple, so clear, yet my head was too clouded to get it. I found myself thinking, if Baekhyun was still alive, he would’ve made the best out of it. And I probably should do that too. I would never know… when will be my time. So instead of wasting my life with _not_ living it, I tried to, well, as she said, ‘live while being alive.’ And slowly, but surely, I got back on my feet. Tried to make friends. To enjoy school more. To keep in touch with Minseok and Jongdae. And one day, I was finally brave enough to talk to you too.”

 

‘ _You look like you might need it._ ’

 

Luhan looks up at him briefly, a small smile on his lips. “I guess that was what I did for two years. Trying to live while being alive.”

 

The enormous amount of fondness washes over him as he stares down at the boy walking beside him. “You’ve been so strong.” Sehun says, almost breathlessly. “I wish I had your courage.”

 

Their gazes meet again. “I wish I was there for you.” Luhan replies.

 

“I shouldn’t have left.” Sehun doesn’t know how many times should he repeat those words until his guilt disappears. “I’m so sorry.”

 

“Hey,” Luhan lifts their tangled hands, “we’re together now, aren’t we? That’s all that matters. Let’s not waste our recent time beating ourselves for something that happened in the past.”

 

Sehun lets out a sigh out of the awe he feels. “You’ve always been so wise. How could you come up with such words?”

 

“Are you fanboying over me right now?”

 

“I think I’ve always fanboyed over you since the day we first met.”

 

Faint hues of pink spread on Luhan’s cheek as he throws his head back laughing. “This is so silly.” He points out. “And adorable.”

 

“I’m liking it, though.” Sehun says, and it makes Luhan’s laughter subside. “Very much.”

 

True to his words, Luhan has this gleam of adoration in his eyes as he looks up at him. “I am too.” He says in a hushed voice. “Very much.”

 

It’s seconds later that Sehun realizes they’ve stopped on their tracks, and Luhan is still looking up at him, and he wonders how could Luhan’s eyes twinkle like this, like there are trillion of starts in those orbs. His gaze trails down across Luhan’s button nose – which he had been so fond of due to the adorable way they’d scrunch up in occasionally, and then it stops on Luhan’s pair of slightly plump and pinkish lips. Honestly, Sehun never really thought of those intimate things about Luhan, like holding him close, holding his hand to make him blush, or staring into his eyes in such proximity.

 

But somehow, at this moment, Sehun suddenly thinks of pressing his lips against Luhan’s.

 

“I want to kiss you.” he blurts out.

 

Luhan looks perplexed for a moment, as expected. It came out of the blue from him. But then he watches the mirth unravel on Luhan’s face as he giggles. The hues of pink are back on his cheeks. “So?” Luhan raises his eyebrow at him in amusement.

 

“Can I…?” Sehun croaks out, feeling overwhelmingly nervous out of sudden.

 

But to his relief, Luhan nods, looking shy. “You can.”

 

And so, Sehun does just that. He takes one step forward, closer, as if they weren’t close enough. He leans down a little due to their noticeable height difference. His gaze crawls up onto Luhan’s eyes, and he pauses. There’s only a couple of inches between their lips.

 

Much to his surprise, Luhan leans up and closes the said distance, pressing their lips together gently.

 

To describe it frankly, it’s just a pair of lips pressing against another pair. No actual movements, no intentions in going beyond this limit. But it has such a gigantic effect on him. His heart won’t stop dancing in his ribcage, as if it’s demanding to be let out so it could run in circles and holler out the excitement. He doesn’t remember at which point did his eyes flutter close. The lips that are on him are warm and soft, plush, and he never knew how much he had wanted to know all of those facts until now. He’s far beyond glad that he finally knows.

 

He’s the one who pulls away first. Not long enough to linger and hover, but not too fast to break the magic. He finds them opening their eyes at the same time.

 

“How…” he murmurs, “how did it feel?”

 

Luhan chews on his lips for a short while before he answers. “It felt like something we should’ve done long ago.”

 

There’s a soft, yet mischievous smirk at one corner of Luhan’s lips, and Sehun finds himself breathless all over again. “Whoa,” he breathes out, “I’m fanboying over you again right now.”

 

His heart does another round of jumping when Luhan giggles cheerily. It still jumps around when Luhan pulls him over to walk with him again.

 

It’s after a few minutes of walking that they stop in front of a very familiar building. It’s a Korean home-food restaurant which they used to visit a lot. He remembers spending lots of afternoons in it, with his best people.

 

“He really loved kimchi fried rice.” Luhan says with a hint of bittersweet tone in his voice. “Kimchi fried rice with a lot of gochujang.”

 

Sehun can’t help but smile. He can vividly picture the three of them, running all the way down the block, racing against each other towards the entrance of the restaurant. “Remember how he got so pissed off when I told him kimchi fried rice is just a lazier version of bibimbap that got reheated on a pan?”

 

Luhan bursts out into laughter. “Gosh, he was so mad.” He exclaims between his laugh. “I thought he was going to strangle you.”

 

“Indeed.” Sehun grins. “And as a punishment, he forced me to make a giant bowl of kimchi fried rice.”

 

“We ended up finishing the entire bowl together.” Luhan settles down with a smile. “He always looked the most joyous when he ate.”

 

Sehun agrees to those words. But overall, Baekhyun always looked bright and joyous. He shined so bright that he became the light for everyone around him.

 

“I miss him.” He says genuinely.

 

Luhan tightens his hold around Sehun’s hand.

 

“I miss him too.”

 

If they’re in front of the restaurant, then it means they only need to take one more turn to the right at the end of the block to be on the way towards their old school. Sehun inhales deeply and exhales everything out as he starts to see the gates of the school’s area. He then feels Luhan pulling his hand away, and he finds them facing each other now.

 

“Remember when we used to race to the gates?” Luhan says with a wide grin before he turns around and starts running.

 

Sehun immediately grabs the straps of his backpack and pushes himself forward to run. “That’s cheating!”

 

They arrive in front of the gates less than a minute, breaths staggering, the heels of their palms pressing against their knees to support the weight of their upper body. Somewhere along, they laugh childishly over how ridiculous the whole ordeal was. Ridiculous and fun. He hasn’t had that for so long.

 

He misses it. Doing something ridiculous and fun with people he loves.

 

“You’re so frickin fast.” Sehun groans.

 

“I was the captain of the soccer team for a reason.” Luhan straightens his figure up, breaths finally steadying.

 

Sehun waits for another moment to do the same, and that’s when he notices the change on Luhan’s face. Gone was the amusement and mirth. “Han?” he calls, hesitant.

 

Luhan is staring at something far behind him. Sehun wonders what has Luhan been seeing that made him so shocked. So he turns around to follow the path of Luhan’s gaze, and he sees it, the reason.

 

At the other corner of the block, not too far from them, stands someone. A boy in a uniform, as what their eyes allow them to figure out. What stands out the most is the backpack straps on the boy’s shoulders. They’re bright yellow.

 

Yellow. The favorite color of someone they lost two years ago.

 

The boy’s face now gets clearer.

 

And he looks very, _very_ familiar.

 

Sehun could feel air getting stuck inside his throat.

 

Soon enough, the boy raises his hand and waves at them excitedly.

 

“It’s…” Luhan’s whisper awakens him, “that’s…”

 

“Hoi!” the boy shouts at them.

 

‘ _Hoi! Wait for me! I hate running!_ ’

 

The boy then jogs towards them, and with each step the boy takes, the clearer his face gets. Sehun feels Luhan’s hand seeking for his again. The both of them are in disbelief together.

 

After a moment, the boy finally arrives right before them. Smile adorns his entire face, from his almost disappearing eyes to the wide almost rectangle shaped grin. He shines so, so bright.

 

“Hello, guys!” the boy greets excitedly.

 

Sehun can’t even react to the voice. The one he hadn’t heard for so long. The one he had wished to hear once again. Now that he finally hears it once more, he doesn’t know what to do.

 

It’s Luhan who finds his voice back first. “H… _Hyun_?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

Baekhyun.

 

Byun Baekhyun.

 

Baekhyun is standing in front of them.

 

Baekhyun, whose grin hasn’t ceased yet. “It’s been so long, huh.”

 

‘ _It’s been so long!_ ’ Baekhyun would say to them every morning, with this feigned devastated look on his face.

 

‘ _We just saw each other yesterday, dumbass._ ’ He or Luhan would groan out of embarrassment. The whole class was watching and giggling at them. Baekhyun was such a silly dork.

 

“B…but,” Luhan does the job to reply again, “we just… saw each other… yesterday.”

 

That’s the correct reply. That’s the only reply they should give Baekhyun. It’s been two long, painful years, but it doesn’t matter now. They’re seeing Baekhyun again. It erases those entire two years.

 

His time is finally ticking again.

 

“Oh,” Baekhyun blinks at them before smiling sheepishly, “right!” he muses before he takes a few steps forward and, without any warning, puts both of his hands on each of their shoulders and pull them together into an embrace. “But then how come I miss you guys so much?”

 

Sehun’s arms fall limp on his sides. Baekhyun is hugging them. _Baekhyun is hugging them_ , and it feels _so real_. The skin of Baekhyun’s arm is warm against his nape.

 

Baekhyun is here.

 

 _He is here_.

 

And so, he brings up a hand and pulls Baekhyun closer to him and Luhan.

 

“I miss you too.” He croaks out. “I miss you so much.”

 

“Ow?” Baekhyun giggles. “Really?”

 

“I’m sorry.” He breathes out shakily. He presses his forehead against Baekhyun’s shoulder, fully aware of his own tears that are staining the uniform shirt. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

 

“What? What for?” Baekhyun pulls away, shock swirling on his face. “Why are you guys crying?”

 

There’s a short pause before Luhan, wordlessly, pulls Baekhyun into another hug again, and for the first time in his life, Sehun sees Luhan crying his heart out; sobbing, shaking, wailing. That’s how much Luhan had missed his dear friend, how much Luhan had been in pain because of his sudden disappearance from his life. It hurts his heart so much.

 

After being dazed for a moment, Baekhyun breaks into soft chuckles as he pats Luhan’s back repeatedly. “It’s alright, it’s alright.” He says warmly. “It’s alright, Han-ah!”

 

Luhan is still crying. He himself is still crying as well. But he finds comfort in Baekhyun’s words; it _is_ alright now. Everything should be alright, because now, finally, they’re together again. They’ve met the one they had missed so much for the past two years – which had felt like an eternity they never desired for.

 

“Stop crying, Hannie. It’s okay – stop – _stop_ crying, Lu Han, you look so damn ugly, sheesh!” Baekhyun uses his own hand to wipe away the tears on Luhan’s face, playfully doing it harshly. Luhan bats Baekhyun’s hand away, not being able to prevent himself from breaking out into a tearful laugh. “You too, Sehun!” he then realizes that Baekhyun is already right in front of him, wiping the tears on his cheeks with his knuckles. “You guys are already ugly without crying.”

 

“Yes, yes, you’ve always been the only one pretty.” Luhan snorts, voice still raspy from literally wailing.

 

The playful smirk at the corner of Baekhyun’s lips somehow eases the pain in his heart, which was caused by the longing and guilt he had buried inside his chest for long. He’s really seeing Baekhyun again. He’s really seeing Baekhyun laughing again.

 

This might not be the resolution he sought for the last two years, but this gives a huge, undefeatable healing to his wounds in a way he never even dared to dream of.

 

“I’m sorry.” He repeats.

 

Because that’s what he had always wanted to tell Baekhyun. Maybe in his dreams, if his mind was kind of enough to him. And now he finally has the chance.

 

“I’m so sorry.”

 

All he ever wanted is to see Baekhyun’s smile again and hear Baekhyun’s forgiveness.

 

“I’m really –“ Sehun pauses, breath gets stuck in his throat, “really sorry –“

 

This time, Baekhyun doesn’t ask him what is he sorry for. Baekhyun doesn’t look like he’s clueless. Instead, Baekhyun gives him a wide, bright smile that feels much, much warmer than the sun.

 

“You did nothing wrong.” Is what Baekhyun tells him.

 

Not a forgiveness. Not an acknowledgement of his fault. Instead, Baekhyun tells him that he did nothing wrong.

 

He did nothing wrong.

 

He wasn’t at fault.

 

There. He’s heard it from Baekhyun himself.

 

Sehun holds his breath as Baekhyun wraps arms around him, engulfing him in a tight hug. For a moment, they just stay like that. It’s like Baekhyun is trying to make a point of what he had told him earlier; he did nothing wrong. And as Baekhyun pats his back gently, repeatedly, Baekhyun also lifts the misery in him bit by bit, piece by piece, a chunk after a chunk.

 

And when Baekhyun lets go of him, the misery is there no more.

 

He’s finally, really, absolutely, genuinely, free.

 

“Let’s go!” Baekhyun chirps as he takes both Sehun and Luhan’s hands and start to pull them along with him, walking towards the end of the block in his usual position; between Sehun and Luhan. “Ah, there’s _Chanyeol_! He’s been waiting for us.”

 

Sehun stares at Baekhyun, perplexed, before he turns his gaze towards the direction Baekhyun had pointed at earlier. True to the words, there’s someone waiting under the tree at the corner of the block. Tall, slightly curly hair, standing in the middle of the tree’s shade. That’s really Chanyeol.

 

So, Baekhyun has gotten his own resolution as well.

 

Maybe, after all, Chanyeol’s heart was the same with Baekhyun. Why did it go so bad between them that day, Sehun still doesn’t know of, yet is not curious about anymore. What matters is that Baekhyun got his love as well.

 

“Hyun-ah,” he hears Luhan calling Baekhyun with such soft voice; just like what he used to do in their afternoon walks to home, “where are we going?”

 

Baekhyun breaks into a giggling fit. Then he lifts his head up, staring up at the skies. That’s a habit of him which Sehun had learnt years ago. Baekhyun really loved the sunny skies. Baekhyun loved everything that’s warm, just like him.

 

Summer days are always beautiful like this. Blazing, bright, almost blinding. Sehun was never fond of it before, but now he loves it. He loves this sunny summer day. The sunny summer skies. And this, this might be, ironically, the best day of his life.

 

Because today, he’s with his two best people. Two bright smiles. Two big laughs. Two pair of mischievous eyes. Two hands that used to claim each of his own and drag him around; the same hands that would occasionally end up against his cheeks, rubbing, pinching, at the most random time. The hands that he’d never let go of from now on.

 

Today, Sehun is with two people who love Summer.

 

They’re with him right now.

 

It’s funny, how life works. Sometimes the outcome doesn’t reflect the process. It often comes with unexpected endings.

 

And Sehun still thinks he was too young when he learnt about it already, but he’s glad for it nonetheless.

 

It makes him cherish this moment more.

 

“Home.” Baekhyun then whispers out into the air. “We’re going home.”

 

Something washes over him. Maybe a particular realization, maybe some sort of relief. He turns at Luhan, who apparently had glanced at him first. Together, they give each other a gentle, warm smile.

 

Sehun then feels Baekhyun’s hold around his hand tightens. “We’re going home!” he repeats with much more excitement this time.

 

Luhan chuckles, fondness oozing from his eyes as he stares at his dearest friend.

 

Being infected by the smile, Sehun opts to stare up at the skies as well.

 

“Home.” He whispers. It now sounds a lot better. Safer and promising. He finally feels content and at ease.

 

Home.

 

They’re going home.

 

* * *

 

 

**_Twenty people injured, two people killed in train derailment_ **

**_Seoul, South Korea_ ** _Authorities are investigating what caused a train carrying 94 passengers to derail Sunday, August 5 th 2018, killing two people identified as high schoolers and severely injuring 20._

_The train was traveling between the districts of Seodaemun and Yongsan when it left the tracks right at the middle point of the route just less than ten minutes after midnight local time, according to the transport ministry._

_Out of eight train carriages, three derailed in the incident, with the last one overturning._

 

* * *

 

 

Sehun met two of his favorite people back in middle school.

 

It was the first week of his first year. He had entered a school where none of his close friends went to. For a few days, he was awkwardly mingling around with unfamiliar faces, making small talks with anyone he found approachable. His sister Serin, although only a year older, was already on the final year. She tried to keep him around so he wouldn’t feel too inept, made him sit with her and her friends during break time, but eventually at the sixth day, she couldn’t even have her own brunch because of her duties as the recent head of the student council.

 

That was the day he tries to find a seat by himself at the cafeteria. And as he was sticking his head out, looking left and right, a voice had called for him.

 

“Hey! You, milky white skin! Over here!”

 

Of course, he was immediately offended by the nickname. But his hunger won over his pride, and he really needed to find a seat, so he just stiffly turned to the direction towards the boy who had called him over. There were four of them, occupying a table of six. He chose to sit across the boy who had called – he then realized that the boy was actually his classmate. There was another one next to him. Minseok and Jongdae, he finally recalled.

 

“Why aren’t you hanging out with the seniors today?” Minseok had grinned, and Sehun felt tiny under it.

 

“I wasn’t hanging out with them. I was just tagging along with my sister the whole time.” Sehun had explained, although he felt like he actually had no obligation to.

 

“Oh? Which one is your sister?” the boy Jongdae had asked.

 

“Oh Serin.”

 

“Your sister is our _Head of Student Council_?”

 

He turned right to find the owner of the melodious voice who had exclaimed the words in awe. He found the owner to be the boy who sat at the edge of the table, leaning down against the surface so he could look at him. He was greeted with a small face, an adorable button nose, a pair of lips parted in disbelief, and small eyes that tried their best to widen. Next to the boy, sitting between them, is another boy, with rounder small face, doe eyes almost covered in black fringes, another adorable button nose, and a pair of plump lips. Unlike the boy who was in awe with the fact that he was Serin’s brother, this boy was just staring at him with this calmness that was starting to intimidate him.

 

“Y-yes.” He had stuttered.

 

“So cool!” the boy’s grin was wide, very boyish, very bright. “Your sister, I mean. She’s so cool. It makes you cool too!”

 

“Stop it, Byun, you’re scaring him.”

 

“I’m Baekhyun!” the boy stretched his hand towards him, knowing fully that his arm would end up hitting the boy between them; the boy was unfazed by it, as if he had gone through that for endless times. “You’re Sehun!”

 

He took the hand and shook it nervously, noticing that Jongdae and Minseok were laughing at them. Then his gaze naturally shifted at the boy between them. He had expected to be offered a cold greeting out of politeness, but then small, shy smile bloomed on the boy’s lips. “I’m Han. Lu Han. Nice to meet you, Sehun.”

 

“Friends call him with his full name in one go. Luhan! And oh, he’s from Beijing but he’s lived here for quite long and he kind of knows Seoul better than we do.”

 

“Shut it, Baekhyun, let Luhan explain it himself.”

 

“I’m sorry for that.” Luhan had smiled sheepishly at him. “He’s… quite hyperactive.”

 

Sehun had nodded awkwardly. “I can see.”

 

“These two here have been friends since elementary school.” Minseok added in. “It’s cool to have your best friend entering the same school, right.”

 

“Yes!” Baekhyun proceeded to lay his head on Luhan’s shoulder. “I can’t live without my _Hannie_.”

 

Luhan sighed and smiled bitterly, seemingly trying to chew on and gulp down the second hand embarrassment. “Hm.”

 

“You’re killing him, Byun.”

 

“Baekhyun, Luhan looks like he’s about to cry because of you.”

 

“Hey wait,” Baekhyun shot up straight, leaning back, seemingly to observe him, “is it just me or do Luhan and Sehun look… similar?”

 

That had silenced the entire table for a moment.

 

Then Minseok clapped, looking so amused. “You’re right!”

 

“True true!” Jongdae joined. “How could they look almost the same?”

 

“It’s like they’re _twins_!” Baekhyun had chirped.

 

Sehun felt heat spreading to his cheeks. He wasn’t really comfortable, being the center of attention. But then to his surprise, Luhan started to giggle. Which then broke into a laughter, a genuine, amused one. Luhan turned to look at him, and then tried to suppress his laugh. “Oh gosh,” Luhan chuckled, “we really do!”

 

Sehun finally had his first genuine laugh that day.

 

And at that afternoon, he didn’t realize that those two best friends would become his best people.

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

_Be happy._

_Even if it’s not the ideal kind of happiness that society had imprinted in your head. Even it it’s not in the form that is as big as you wanted. Even if you’re not sure you can feel it tomorrow._

_Because happiness isn’t the same for everyone. Happiness isn’t something we can measure. Happiness isn’t always something exact with predetermined longevity._

_It’s okay if you find happiness in something different. It’s okay if you get the happiness from small or temporary things. It’s okay if you find happiness in different things every day._

_And do believe that everything will always pass in the end. And you don’t have to do it in such a great way. What matters is that you stay through it all, to the end._

_And you deserve it; the happiness. No matter who, where and what you are._

_Please. Try to be happy. For yourself. Not for anyone else._

_Try to live while being alive._

_-From someone who’s still working on being happy as well.-_

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I’m sorry :’)


End file.
